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Comment by idownvoted | Hacker News Reader

Whom does Spotify try to aquisice here?

Their users? Their content creators? Or rather their staff?

All 3 groups could be possible reasons. But given how little median content creators matter to the organization, users and staff are more likely.

But if it were the users, then why buy Joe Rogan's users at all? Especially at a record braking price?

This makes me believe it's more likely staff.

If that is the case one has to wonder: is this generally the sad mental state of tech workers? Or is it rather a few employees who, emboldened by cancel-culture, will toss their political agenda around the office while other employees, intimidated by cancel-culture, shy away from calling out the obvious BS?

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Society in the west seems to not know how to deal with this new variety of bullying. By cloaking their bullying in the veil of righteousness, bullies are able to engage in self-aggrandisement to satisfy the tyrannical need to shape the world in the image that they desire, without engaging in the civilized discourse and debate that would preclude such decision making. The justification thrown around is that the cause is righteous and therefore the ends justify the means, which is pretty much the same justification that has been used by every tyrant in the past.

Standing up to them comes at a high cost, but when has it ever been easy. Perhaps the rest of society has too much to lose now.

>Society in the west seems to not know how to deal with this new variety of bullying

Society in the West in contrast to... what exactly? Are you under the impression non-Western societies don't shape culture based on norms and expectations about what's proper or right? How is Spotify deleting episodes from their own platform tyranny? Jesus people have become so dramatic and whiny. Here's a crazy idea, if you don't want your episodes deleted don't sell rights to your intellectual property for 100 million bucks to another party

Comments like the one you replied to honestly seem kind of silly. The "problem" you're describing is as old as time, it's not some new phenomenon the west bumped into.

People across the world calling you a fascist / communist, with 30 seconds of effort, to their and your 1,000 closest friends, seems like a pretty new phenomenon.

"your 1,000 closest friends?"

Sarcasm really doesn't help online communication. I think they're referring to a phenomenon called "dogpiling" where a twitterer says something about a person they don't like, and their followers have a field day trashing the person. The phenomenon isn't new, but the magnitude is.

Come to think of it, maybe just the speed and availability. Mass letter writing campaigns are totally a thing, but they require significant efforts to coordinate

The push (vs pull) / broadcasting nature seems different to me.

Previously, more interaction was personal and ephemeral. If I said something to someone on the street, maybe the 5 closest people heard me.

In a small town, word would probably get around in ~2 weeks of social interactions, if it was scandalous enough.

Now, on the majority of social media platforms, if you reply to me then all of my friends + all of your friends immediately see the reply. Both the broadcasting and immediacy seem relatively novel.

Removing random episodes offering no reasoning is tyrannical. It being "their platform" is a non-statement as that's the only place they can be tyrants.

No, it's not. It's about as tyrannical as a chef deciding what meals she serves in her own restaurant. While we're on the topic of Western civilization, people deciding what they do with their own property in their private businesses is actually the basis of Western civilization, in contrast to the apparently now mainstream take that they ought to be compelled to host something they don't want to host.

A tyrant is someone who puts dissidents up against the wall and puts a bullet in their head, not a streaming platform deciding what they want to stream.

How is it tyranny? Under the most liberal definition tyranny is: "cruel, unreasonable, or arbitrary use of power or control."

It certainly is not cruel for any definition of cruel I am familiar with. It certainly isn't arbitrary, Spotify is not doing this on a whim and it isn't taking down all the episodes, it clearly is being very deliberate, though you may disagree with their process. The only one could be unreasonable, but what exactly makes this unreasonable? Again, you may disagree with their reasoning, but it is not an unreasonable position.

Why don't we back off this extreme rhetoric that plagues our conversations today?

> It certainly isn't arbitrary... [a]gain, you may disagree with their reasoning, but it is not an unreasonable position.

Those are slightly incorrect interpretations of the words 'arbitrary' and 'unreasonable'.

Reasonable doesn't mean 'has reasons'. Every decisions has reasons. If a king decides to chop someone's head off he had reasons - he felt like it. Being reasonable/unreasonable is about whether an opinion can be changed by evidence and argument. Almost all moderation is unreasonable, I've very rarely seen a moderator make a call and then not stick with it (being unreasonable isn't always a bad thing). Reasonableness is a judgement call on the quality of the reasons behind a decision.

Similarly, arbitrary doesn't mean unpredictable. It is a judgement call on whether the reasons behind an action are reasonable. Being done on behalf of a policy doesn't make an action reasonable.

It is quite an easily sustainable argument that any content moderation policy is arbitrary. Compare European vs American media norms around moderating sex - it is pretty easy to argue by comparison some of the standards floating around are arbitrary, because standards differ but both continents produce great media which involves sex.

arbitrary: "based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system."

None of these are by personal whim, there is clearly a process/system in place to determine whether an episode should stay.

unreasonable: "not guided by or based on good sense" and "beyond the limits of acceptability or fairness." Sorry, I just don't see how these decisions could be considered unreasonable. You may disagree with the moral sense of why they are doing this, you may disagree that that is good sense, but that would be best, your opinion, not some empirically correct point of view.

> there is clearly a process/system in place to determine whether an episode should stay.

Which system are you thinking of? There is probably just a content moderation group that makes aye/nay calls. A system is something like judicial review of police actions, or that strange independent review council that Facebook is setting up.

Spotify's 'system' is going to boil down to someone making arbitrary calls. There isn't a science to it.

> Sorry, I just don't see how these decisions could be considered unreasonable.

Millions of people endorse Joe Rogan, he is a benchmark of what acceptability means. Joe Rogan talking about something is almost definitely marking it as something that is a matter of interest to the public and a legit topic of conversation.

He is far more qualified to decide what is and isn't acceptable to his audience and the public discourse than Spotify, some random corporation filled with people who passed a job interview.

Censoring his content is unreasonable by default, unless Spotify has a really compelling argument.

Is it tyranny to force a business to sell, say, a wedding cake, to a customer they don't like?

Or is it tyranny to not force a business to accept everyone, even if they don't comply with social norms like, say, wearing a mask?

I'm not certain that tyrants pay their employees $100 million.

He is being more than fairly compensated. They don't have to host his white nationalist content.

They pay him handsomely for the privilege of removing the episodes where he uncritically nods along with the likes of Stephan Moleneaux and Alex Jones.

Downvote away, but without some public platform, you'll never understand and combat these people.

See: Hells Angels interviews on primetime TV in the 70s-80s etc at the peak of the fear surrounding them.

The public platform being the Internet. Nobody forced Rogan to move their content to a closed platform like Spotify. Before that they seemed to be able to discuss what they wanted with who they wanted. But instead of their freedom of content production, they picked the money. That's as simple as that. If they want to keep producing "freedom" content they just have to break the contract (and give back some of the money) or produce under another name on self owned platform (and build back the community).

> Here's a crazy idea, if you don't want your episodes deleted don't sell rights to your intellectual property for 100 million bucks to another party

It is especially weird considering this was basically a foregone conclusion the moment Rogan signed with Spotify. Take a look at the HN comments when the news broke[1].

Spotify has a policy that says they won't host certain content. Rogan and his guests have a history of saying things that don't fit that content policy. It didn't take a genius to see those two things were incompatible. I'm not sure there is any convincing argument that Rogan is being mistreated for walking right into this easily predictable situation.

[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23239304

> Spotify has a policy that says they won't host certain content. Rogan and his guests have a history of saying things that don't fit that content policy.

Citation needed

This is Spotify's content policy:

https://support.spotifyforpodcasters.com/hc/en-us/articles/3...

Assuming we're not talking about infringing or illegal content, we're left to conclude that Rogan "promotes, advocates, or incites hatred or violence against a group or individual based on characteristics, including, race, religion, gender identity, sex, ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation, veteran status, or disability."

Note, that does not mean "has an un-PC take on something", it very specifically says promotes, advocates or incites hatred or violence. Where and when has Rogan ever done that?

I don't listen to Rogan. I can't speak to the specifics of what he says on his podcast. I know that he has had on multiple recurring guests that have been deplatformed elsewhere such as Alex Jones and Milo Yiannopoulos. Rogan also can't seem to go more than a few months without receiving accusations of transphobia[1]. You are also welcome to click through the link in my previous comment and see the issue discussed in depth including my thoughts on it. "Promotes hate" is an impossible to define phrase, but many people feel he is guilty of it.

[1] - https://www.google.com/search?q=joe+rogan+transphobic

I do listen to Rogan and I'm aware of the trans controversy. What he actually took issue with was a trans woman who fought in women's MMA without telling her competitors that she was trans. This creates a serious safety risk in what is already a dangerous sport, and it was irresponsible of her to lie. Rogan didn't even say trans women shouldn't compete, just that they should disclose it so the people they're fighting know what they're getting into and can make an informed decision.

If pointing out simple biological realities like "the bodies of people who go through puberty as a male have more muscle mass than the bodies of people who go through puberty as a female" constitutes "promoting hate" then the concept has no meaning. If a phrase is "impossible to define" perhaps it is not a good basis on which to form a policy.

You are not being honest about Rogan's opinions on trans athletes. He does not want trans women competing against cisgender women.[1]

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3e0qwXgjjDA&t=120s

In the context of MMA what he said was they should disclose it and ciswomen can choose to go into the fight or not, I am not lying about that.

The clip you posted was about weightlifting. If a biological man can call himself a woman and compete in women's weightlifting, why don't we just get rid of the gender categories altogether and have men and women compete together? If we did that, do you think any woman, trans or cis, would ever win a title again?

Regardless, reasonable people can disagree about these things. Back to the original question: in what conceivable way does any of this constitute promoting hatred or violence? Rogan said that people who are biologically male should compete with other people who are also biologically male, I don't see where he said we should beat them up or kill them or anything like that? So we are not allowed to have differences of opinion about which competitions people should compete in?

This is what you said:

>Rogan didn't even say trans women shouldn't compete

This is what Rogan said (rough transcript):

>[When you let a trans women competing against cisgender women] you are stealing from [cisgender] women, you are stealing victory, you are cheating, you are fucking 100% cheating, and anybody who says they are not is an asshole.

You are misrepresenting Rogan's point to make it sound more acceptable. He is not speaking specifically about MMA. He is not talking about other competitors having a choice. He is just straight saying that a trans woman is cheating by competing against cis women.

He has spoken about this on a number of different occasions. The one clip you happened to find at the top of your google search does not constitute everything he ever said on the topic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQTfyjhvfH8&t=4210s

This is where he's talking about MMA. There were other occasions where he mentioned disclosing it. I don't remember the exact episode and timestamp.

But like I said above (sorry, edited as I thought more). What does any of this have to do with promoting hate or violence? Does thinking people should compete in this or that competition somehow mean you hate them?

>The one clip you happened to find at the top of your google search does not constitute everything he ever said on the topic.

I never said it did constitute everything he has ever said on the topic. However that isn't the point. Not every episode is being removed. Only some of them are. He can be accepting of trans people on 99 episodes and it doesn't undo being transphobic on the 100th. It is also possible his opinions have evolved over time, but we aren't judging his current opinion. All that maters is what was said on the specific episodes being removed.

>What does any of this have to do with promoting hate or violence? Does thinking people should compete in this or that competition somehow mean you hate them?

You are the one who brought sports into this. I simply stated he has been repeatedly accused of transphobia. His opinion on sports is part of that, but it isn't the only time he has been called transphobic.

> You are the one who brought sports into this. I simply stated he has been repeatedly accused of transphobia. His opinion on sports is part of that, but it isn't the only time he has been called transphobic.

Ok, then find a clip where he promotes violence against trans people or any other group or tells people to hate them. The burden of proof is on people making the claim to provide evidence that supports it, not the other way around.

Edit:

To get back to the fundamental question here. The issue is, Spotify has a policy. Does Rogan violate the policy or not? By your own description, the policy hinges on terms that are "impossible to define". So, is a policy with undefinable terms a good policy? Is there any objective way to determine whether it was violated or not and apply it fairly and consistently to everyone? If not, why are we holding up the policy as a gold standard and using it as a justification for censorship when it is impossible to determine whether or not it was violated?

You are arguing against points I never made.

I didn't accuse him of transphobia. I said he can't go a few months without new accusations of transphobia. That is just a fact. If you want, you can go through those Google results from a few comments back and try to refute those accusations. I don't care enough about Joe Rogan to try to prove anything about him.

I never said Spotify's policy was "a gold standard" or even "good policy". I'm not defending their actions in removing specific episodes. I have no idea why those specific episodes were removed. I simply started with a comment that this was an obvious eventuality due to Spotify's policy and what Rogan says (it is a simple fact that he is often accused of spreading hate speech, whether what he says is actually hate speech is almost irrelevant because the accusations alone are enough to know that he would eventually be perceived to have violated the policy).

Ok, if I understand correctly based on this and your original comment, you make two claims.

1. This was an "obvious eventuality"

2. This does not constitute mistreatment of Rogan by Spotify.

First, many of the episodes such as the Milo Yiannopoulos one predate the Spotify deal. Spotify knew what they were buying and should have said at the time what they were and were not willing to host. Only Spotify and and Rogan know for sure the details of what was in their contract, but from what Rogan has said on the show, they had agreed that Spotify would have no creative control and they would host the whole catalog. I doubt very, very much that anyone would engage in a 9-figure contract without spelling out these details. If Spotify has decided to renege on what they agreed to, I think that makes it both non-obvious that that would happen and mistreatment (they are not honoring the contract).

Whenever these controversies arise, if Rogan mentions them on the show at all he says that nobody from Spotify says anything to him about them and he gets no feedback from them at all about the content, since they aren't supposed to have any creative control over the show. Maybe he's lying, but if not, I think that would also be non-obvious and mistreatment if Spotify is telling Rogan there's no problem and then taking content down behind his back.

And just...I don't understand this attitude. "Well of course people will make baseless accusations, and you'll be punished because of them without anyone trying to figure out the facts! You know this will happen, so it's not a problem!" Like....yes, that's a problem.

"Of course you get sent to the gulag if someone accuses you of criticizing Stalin. You know it doesn't matter if it's true or not! You know all this, so it's not mistreatment! It's just an obvious eventuality!"

When the narrative can't be twisted to their favor, they will simply cancel your responses. These are the same people that would argue cancel culture does not exist.

Edit: I say people, but realistically no human could exist with such flagrant disregard for logic and reasonable discourse.

This is literally "The Glenn Beck".

"I didn't accuse him of being a Kenyan. I said he can't go a few months without new accusations of being a Kenyan. That is just a fact. If you want, you can go through those Google results from a few comments back and try to refute those accusations. I don't care enough about Barack Obama to try to prove anything about him."

^ What’s wrong with that statement? It’s a crude way to phrase things, but it’s true. Saying trans women have a biologic advantage when competing against cis women is not transphobic.

> Saying trans women have a biologic advantage when competing against cis women is not transphobic.

I never said it was transphobic.

Would it be fair for cisgender woman to compete in strength sports against https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janae_Kroc?

Do you truly believe that this person would have no advantage competing against cisgender woman? I think most people would be able to see the obvious advantage Janae gained from formerly being a male.

It is just as "fair" as it is for me to compete against LeBron James for a spot in the NBA. Sports are inherently unfair. They take a tremendous amount of work, but it is almost never about work alone. The best athletes are almost always born with physical gifts that are huge outliers.

The truth is that trans women have been allowed to compete on the collegiate and international stages for almost two decades at this point. Where are all the transgender athletes dominating competition. Why doesn't Janae Kroc have a Olympic gold medal? This fear is mostly unfounded.

EDIT: I did a little more research after posting and I will refer you to the words of Kroc herself[1]:

> And yes as hard as it is to believe for some people one year is a sufficient amount of time for HRT to completely eliminate any advantage that person had and there is significant evidence to back this up. This is also why even though trans women have been able to compete in the Olympics since Athens in 2004 we have not had one single trans woman medal at the Olympics...

>As far as going forward is concerned it's all about education. This is so much misinformation out there and so many people talking about how transwomen will dominate all women's sports and yet that has never happened. It's very similar to the threat of transwomen in bathrooms concerning child safety. No recorded incidents ever but it was used as a scare tactic to enact laws.

[1] - https://old.reddit.com/r/powerlifting/comments/75rd7q/janae_...

According to the Wikipedia page, it seems Janae only competed before transitioning in men's weightlifting, at which point he[1] held several world records.

So, to answer your question, the reason Janae does not hold a gold medal in women's weightlifting, is that she never competed as a woman.

It is not really comparable to an average, non-professional athlete competing against a professional athlete. A fair comparison would be Lebron James competing against Breanna Stewart (WNBA Finals MVP) or the LA Lakers competing against the Houston Comets.

And hey, that might be interesting! But it's not currently what we're doing. Again, if biological sex doesn't make any difference in sports, then why even have separate men's and women's competitions at all?

[1] The Wikipedia page notes she uses male pronouns when referring to the time before transitioning.

>He does not want trans women competing against cisgender women.

Which is not a transphobic take, it's a logical, biologically correct take.

Total honesty on this one: I don't think it's right, either.

Biological males are just stronger, in general.

It provides a disadvantage to biological females.

So, by your own admission, you’re basing your criticism of Joe Rogan on hearsay? Also, there is absolutely nothing wrong with interviewing controversial people. Maybe I’m in the minority these days but I personally like hearing contrarian views because it allows me to form my own opinion on people and subjects without relying on others to tell me what to believe.

Plenty of news sources come up in that Google search so you say "hearsay" and I say "reporting". Either way, the guy has literally thousands of hours of podcasts. I don't think someone needs to have listened to every single minute to have an opinion on the guy.

There is also a difference between someone with "contrarian views" and someone with dangerous views. I got no problem if he has someone on to talk about how we shouldn't introduce gun regulation in the wake of Sandy Hook. I have a problem with him giving a platform to someone who says Sandy Hook was fake, the parents who lost children are actors, and they should be harassed into admitting as much. Nothing good comes from giving a guy like that more attention, power, and money by having him on the show.

> I don't think someone needs to have listened to every single minute to have an opinion on the guy.

Agreed, but the least you could do is link to examples of him saying those things, since it's all recorded we don't need to rely on biased third-party reports.

Anyone who actually listens to his podcast knows that it's not true that he promotes hate.

I love how you resort to the "many people feel" standard with a hand wave. Many people where I live feel that cell phone towers give them cancer so we need to get rid of the cell phone towers on that burden of proof. Many people feel like the moon landing was faked. Many people think educating women is heretical. Shall we surrender to them as well?

Delegating judgment to other people is weak and cowardly. Feel free to form your own opinions based on your observation of the facts but it's disgusting to come in here and say "many people".

>Many people feel like the moon landing was faked.

Isn't Joe Rogan one of those people? Hasn't he had at least three moon landing deniers on his podcast and agreed with them?

No, he hasn't denied the moon landing as far as I know. I haven't heard the episodes you're referring to, but he's had other guests like Neil DeGrasse Tyson and Elon Musk who have discussed space travel and he's never expressed any skepticism about it.

I do a lot of walking and listen to podcasts when I do it.

I've listened to quite a few Rogan podcasts, I have never heard anything overly objectionable. (I have heard some stuff that was maybe critical of some parts of my own life, but I was ok with it.) Rogan is very entertaining, you might try some and see if you like it.

Also: I've found that I sometimes find podcasts featuring people I completely disagree with. I find that when I listen to these, I frequently learn interesting things. I'm sometimes offended a bit, but I knew that going in. I may be fooling myself, but I think it's making me a more well-rounded person.

YouTube would likely remove the videos as well. YouTube removes videos by conservatives all the time.

A good contrast is China. China is very careful not to have another cultural Revolution. The solutions they use may be unpalatable to many westerners.

That the difference in canceling between the Western vs non-Western world is only in the cultural/norms dimension, is intellectually dishonest in my humble opinion.

A professor being canceled for saying e.g. that male and female brains are anatomically different, or worse, that non-binary genders is not a thing, has more to do with something else than culture/norms.

That something else is an interesting subject which has actually been discussed on JRE. :)

> Society in the West in contrast to... what exactly?

The brief period in time during which enlightenment values were held in higher regard.

> How is Spotify deleting episodes from their own platform tyranny?

The parent comment referred to staff within large tech companies. Anecdotally I hear plenty of stories about how activists have essentially bullied their way into positions of influence at some of the large tech companies, particularly to influence these types of decisions. Perhaps it is a coincidence in this case.

It's ironic that somebody who is promoting ideological censorship is calling other people whiny.

Yes, I support the right of any private business to engage in ideological censorship if they want to. I don't care if it's Spotify and Rogan or a Christian business censoring atheists or a homophobic cake shop not selling gay wedding cakes. They all ought to have the right to choose how they do business.

If you don't like it, don't sell your rights away, and go somewhere else. That's how free societies work. Private citizen can lobby, workers can protest, customers can boycott, and everyone's free to start their own venture with their own rules, that's how you deal with it.

What's the "bullying" here exactly? Removing Alex Jones episodes?

Presumably Spotify employees bullying their colleagues and employer with sanctimonious moralistic arguments such as harm avoidance.

> Society in the west seems to not know how to deal with this new variety of bullying

If by new you mean new to the Roman Republic, sure. But pretty much every politician from the first kings and village elders justified what they did, good or bad, as part of the fight for righteousness.

well said...

It's been reported in the past that it is staff.

Spotify has 5,000+ employees -- I wouldn't assume for a second that it's the tech workers doing this, I suspect it's probably HR and marketing and so on. It's a big bureaucratic organization.

I like to think if I was at Spotify, and I saw people holding the company hostage like this -- threatening to quit (or whatever) if they don't get their way -- that I would stand up and threaten to do the same if they do get their way.

If the only way to remove the ability of these people to make threats is to create a lose-lose situation for your employer, then you have a responsibility to do that. If enough companies see this happen and are forced to navigate a needless lose-lose situation, maybe we'll see companies take a harder position against advocacy and activism and politics in the workplace. If all else is equal, hopefully they'll be forced to take the position that they would have taken if nobody threatened anything; they'll fall back to their actual principles.

I'm curious where the line is for you. Is there any legal content where it is permissible that Spotify doesn't want to host it?

Definitely, but Joe Rogan is nowhere near that line.

I don't have a problem with the platform restricting content. I have a problem with the behavior of the employees reaching outside of their role to forward their political goals. If your job is to curate content, and you disagree with the content of JRE, you would have stopped the deal from happening in the first place.

Many employees at Spotify did object to signing Joe Rogan.

> employees reaching outside of their role to forward their political goals

The vast majority of executives in the corporate world are conservative, and in addition to personally supporting conservative movements, they frequently direct company resources towards furthering right leaning agendas.

Is it really that offensive that a handful of employees are at a handful of tech companies are trying to steer the ship in the other direction? Are you similarly offended when oil companies lobby the government to further the oil industries interests? Are you offended when corporations successfully push congress to pass tax breaks largely targeted at corporations and the rich?

I think it's pretty clear that Spotify wants to host it, seeing as they paid $100 million for the right to do so. It seems some employees, whom Spotify did not entrust with the decision to host this content or not, are mad about it and are attempting a hostile takeover of their company to run it according to their own politics instead of how the owners and managers have decided to do.

always pay attention who you hire, especially in HR. Woke and activist HR hires woke and activist people, woke and activist people will cause you trouble and can wreck your whole ship. This is true for every industry but especially for media, just look what happened to the once so prestigious news outlets, all taken hostage.

Smart companies have already been filtering them out. See Coinbase, who literally paid them to leave.

Does this tend to improve the company's financial performance, or is this simply worth doing if you have certain political goals for your company that outweigh financial results? i.e., is this "smart companies" as in those with good financial ideas or "smart companies" as in those who want to build a non-woke world for the next generation?

It seems like most SJW-converged companies have been doing just fine as companies, otherwise the invisible hand of the market would have put a stop to this long ago.

The ironic part is that even the most liberal anti-republican types are made miserable by woke employees. I worked at a tech company that went through the exact process you described. Liberal Democrat types used to keep politics out of the workplace for the most part. Then they started hiring woke brainwashed college students who aligned with them ideologically but not procedural. Now instead of the daily chat at the water cooler, we have employees screaming at meetings about the latest outrage, taking days off because something happened in the news, and crying when being woke doesn't help their performance reviews. Everybody is miserable and managers are fleeing.

I agree with another poster that Spotify employees should stand up on principle in opposition to the internal employees that are now running the asylum.

I listen to JRE on Spotify and am not happy about the decision. Actually the first episode I listened to was an Alex Jones + Tim Dillon episode (Tim being a comic I like) that is now gone. And while I don't agree with Alex Jones, I listened to it because I expected it to be controversial or nutty.

There are people who say once you give in to the woke mob they won't stop there, I wouldn't be surprised if now they know they can get other targets canceled if those targets don't consume their orthodoxy.

The Alex Jones and Tim Dillon episode is one of the best ones ever, very sad they pulled it, at least it's still on youtube (for now).

The problem with notion this is that 'woke' or 'activist' values are actually pretty reflective of mainstream values in 21st century society. I would worry more about the legal exposure of people who express opposition to diversity/equity/inclusiveness, as these are very likely to be the people who would end up behaving inappropriately and getting the company mired in harassment and discrimination suits.

The very fact these value are called “activist” and “woke” means they aren’t mainstream values.

And it’s not the values, it’s the disruption. If you had anti-abortion Republicans doing the same would everyone be saying how the company should “tread lightly”.

The labels 'activist' and 'woke' are generally applied derisively by people people who don't share these values. To the mainstream these traits are generally not even labeled, they're just what we consider common decency in this decade. When my parents were my age it was 'activist' and 'woke' to be in favor of mixed race marriages. Times change.

> And it’s not the values, it’s the disruption.

People want to feel like they're in a career that aligns with their values, and the more in demand your talent is, the more you're able to make demands of your employers to have them be values-aligned. If employers don't need top shelf talent, they're free to ignore that and be less competitive in the market for talent. However, successful companies usually tend to compete. We're talking about Spotify because they competed for and hired high-grade talent, and that high-grade talent wants their company to be values-aligned.

Thankfully silencing opinions you disagree with isn’t mainstream...yet.

It's absolutely mainstream on all sides to try to silence people you disagree with, and it always has been. Republicans tried to silence Nike and the NFL over Colin Kaepernick, Democrats tried to silence companies for doing business with the apartheid regime in South Africa, Republicans are trying to silence Coke and Delta for their support of voting rights, civil rights era people tried to silence racist bus companies, evangelicals are constantly trying to silence all manner of businesses all the time. It's a long-standing American tradition at this point.

Sure you can find specific examples, but thankfully the US still has some semblance of celebrating free speech.

And your examples of silence seem fuzzy. Who was trying to “silence” (suppress speech) of South Africa? Suppress their racist political system? Sure, but I don’t recall anyone saying they can’t talk.

That whole premise is flawed. First, they often describe themselves as activists. Second, they are clearly not for diversity and inclusion. It's about conformity and exclusion. They are anti-free speech, pro censorship and bully those who don't conform. You can't square that intolerance with any desire to be diverse and inclusive.

Is there a source for this? Seems way more likely to be monetarily pushed by either investors or advertisers (as other poster said) or at least pre-emptively done to appease those groups.

Source: https://www.vice.com/en/article/xg8jq4/spotify-joe-rogan-tra...

> One of the submitted questions was "Many LGBTQAI+/ally Spotifiers feel unwelcome and alienated because of leadership's response in JRE conversations. What is your message to those employees?" Another was “Why has Spotify chosen to ignore Spectrum ERG's guidance about transphobic content in the JRE catalog?,” referring to a group of Spotify workers who focus on related issues.

> At the meeting, Ek also told employees not to leak to the media, noting "If we can't have open, confidential debates, we will have to move those discussions to closed doors."

Although it should be noted that the main episode at issue in that controversy, with Abigail Shrier, wasn't one of the ones removed in this recent wave and is still on Spotify.

What is Spectrum ERG? Most corps do follow guidance from legal / HR etc to a degree - it's weird if that was being ignored.

"ERG" in this context is probably an Employee Resource Group - a pretty common construct at larger organizations. Think of them as a formal way for employees with some kind of shared set of goals or concerns to organize and support each other, usually completely distinct from their actual job function.

ERGs often have some kind of liaison from HR, especially since they are often associated with diversity programs. But the ERG itself is usually just advisory if they're consulted on something the company is doing.

"LGBTQAI+/ally" at some point we are going to need an abbreviation for this abbreviation.

I don’t know from an advertisers perspective it seems like JRE is pretty mainstream. I don’t recall them having trouble getting sponsors in the past.

Most JRE sponsors were smaller companies targeting niche markets. He didn't have any mass market brands like Starbucks or Chevrolet.

Honest Q, but do any mass market brands like that advertise on podcasts?

It seems like all I hear are the usual suspects: Me Undies, Blue Apron, etc.

Why would they? They got enough money and reach to go directly on platforms themselves...

On other hand, I'm not entirely sure how I feel about the companies marketing on things like pod casts... Some pretty famous ones don't seem to be too special products, see Raid Shadowlegends, Raycon and all of the VPN providers...

I heard second hand that the folks working at Spotify were incredibly unhappy about this Joe Rogan deal, and one of the reasons for that was because leadership steamrolled over any concerns they had. And there were many.

I don't really know who this guy is or why you'd spend 100 million on him to secure a deal. But he's walking away with that money and Spotify is left with the infighting. They fucked themselves over with that absurd investment.

It is not an absurd investment, Spotify is a commodity technology and taking away Joe Rogan podcast from their biggest competitor (Apple) provides much needed differentiation. Joe Rogan's podcast was the number one podcast on Apple Podcasts. Now it isn't available at all.

So you buy out Apple's number 1 podcast...and then Apple has another number 1 podcast. And you're sitting with a lame duck, as is evidenced by TFA.

Is Spotify going to blow another 100 mil on that one and hope for the best?

They messed up by betting large on a celebrity and ignoring the fact that Joe Rogan wasn't a cultural fit.

I don't think you understand the number of monthly listeners he draws, it was around 200 million or so. If you compare it to Howard Stern's contract of 100 million a year, it's really not a huge stretch for Joe Rogan to negotiate that price for a multi year deal and exclusive rights to the back catalog. You can't suddenly snap your fingers and generate a huge audience, extensive content and marque brand into existence.

They tricked a bunch of users over to their (awful) podcast playing experience, playing (free) podcasts is cheaper than paying for music for your subscribers. I don't think they've made their money back on it yet but any user that plays a podcast is just free (or unspent) money for them.

> They messed up by betting large on a celebrity and ignoring the fact that Joe Rogan wasn't a cultural fit.

He's a cultural fit for x hundreds of millions. You may not fall into that demographic, but there's no discounting that other cultures exist outside of your own.

The only reason I have a Spotify account is for Joe Rogan's podcast. I'm a Youtube premium member, so all the music I need comes from Google, except for Joe Rogan.

He's a pro weed, universal health care loving, self-described left of center guy big in the MMA and stand-up comedy circles.

He now has the world's most popular podcast, but because he frequently has guests who are right wing, despite debating them about these things on the show, he is attacked for giving these folks a platform to spread their ideas.

Due to his expertise in MMA and the fact that he's a formally trained fighter and martial artist, he was shaken by an event he witnessed: The fracturing of a woman's skull by Fallon Fox, a transgender woman who hid the fact that she had previously been a male, and had recently transitioned from the league. He commented on it.

This put him in very hot water with the trans activist community, despite the fact that the vast majority of the American public has similar concerns.

The reality is this deal made Spotify a lot of money and brought them listeners and advertising revenue. You don't know who he is, but you aren't the target audience, and your opinions and the opinions of the employees don't matter. Spotify exists to make investors money by creating value for the listeners. The employees shouldn't have any power over how it does that, because they own as much as the equity they've been given, and nothing more.

> Spotify exists to make investors money by creating value for the listeners.

Okay, sure.

> [...the rest of the post...]

I don't see how this connects.

> your opinions and the opinions of the employees don't matter

But your opinion does? It must matter to you, since you spent a few paragraphs on it.

> But your opinion does? It must matter to you, since you spent a few paragraphs on it.

Guessing that what ljm meant was that those opinions shouldn't be important in their personal choice about what to listen to or not listen to.

I was (admittedly poorly) pointing out that the person I was replying to made some effort to share his favourable opinion, which comprises a significant part of the post, while also saying the dissenting ones (mine, Spotify staff) don't matter.

Their logic dictates that none of our opinions matter. That's fine by me; we're squabbling over nothing.

I responded above. I was talking about the opinions not mattering to decision makers in charge of investor capital.

My opinion matters to Spotify executives only so much as me being a paying customer of their platform. They are free to make whatever decisions they want, but are obligated by law to make decisions that benefit their investors. If you are a paying Spotify customer, then yes, your opinion matters to the executives.

Expressing my opinion on a message board isn't a claim that the executives should listen to me.

> They are free to make whatever decisions they want, but are obligated by law to make decisions that benefit their investors.

I'm unaware of any law which requires a business to make money for investors. A business can promise to pay dividends and they can speculate on where their stock can be at a future date, but there is no legal recourse if they lose money.

It's a meme about the case Dodge vs Ford Motor, but all that case said was you can't actively screw your shareholders. Henry Ford had a cash surplus and was deliberately trying to avoid paying dividends to the Dodge brothers.

Oh, yeah that makes sense. TIL

This might be useful:

https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2019/08/24/stakeholder-gover...

Why do their concerns matter? I thought private businesses were free to choose to host or not host any content they want, without any regard to anything or anyone? If employees don't like it, they can quit. Presumably, Spotify put some executive in charge of doing the Rogan deal, the board approved it, and that should be that. Donna from Accounting doesn't get a say. If you’re stocking the shelves at the grocery store management doesn’t care that you think they should only sell Wheaties and not Frosted Flakes. It’s not your decision to make.

Politics are going to exist in the workplace no matter what because workplaces are made of humans. Advocacy and activism are a bad thing?

When they are stupid, yes.

There's a another group - ephemeral online mobs - People not involved with the content at hand in any way, shape or form contribute to a reactionary admonition and I'm sure businesses just want to avoid the controversy altogether. I don't know about Rogan for instance, but Hulu removed 4 episodes of sunny because of racist caricatures. They certainly were racist but the joke was on the characters using the caricatures. It's a silly example but nuance be damned. I don't think Spotify thinks its censoring anything, they just don't want trouble.

The Sunny in Philadelphia thing makes no sense at all. Supposedly, Tina Fey pre-emptively asked to remove some of her own 30 rock episodes and that caused others to need to look like they’re doing something lest they be caught up in a PR storm. Makes zero sense in the context of comedies using it as the butt of jokes though.

That was the canary in the coal mine for me that activist mob outrage is getting out of hand. Another case of Gell Mann amnesia. When it’s a topic I’m extremely familiar with, the preemptive removal or outrage doesn’t make any sense.

Those episodes literally had a discussion about the problems of blackface, and the point of the show is that the characters are terrible people and that’s why the characters did it.[0]

Like you said, all nuance is lost in proactively defending against the online activist mob and we lose good discussion in the process.

[0] https://youtu.be/-0L_oJMhcs0

Spotify bought Rogan because they want his average listener, it's cheaper for them to stream a podcast than to pay royalties on a song. They also don't want to have to answer questions about why a podcaster they (quasi) employ is doing X controversial thing. So that's what they do, they buy him and drop the controversial bits. It's not really that hard to understand is it?

Until you remember that his most popular episodes, and those that keep people coming back, are some of the most controversial. Talking about drugs, legalisation, smoking blunts with celebrities, hunting, and frankly being an openly right wing fanatic with some pretty intolerant world views at times are why he has a big audience. Securing both celebrity, tackling those taboo topics, and being a reasonably good host of conversation propelled him. Taking away the controversy puts him back in the group with nearly every other celebrity with a podcast.

They're not removing 99% of that stuff though, they're taking away only the most extreme bits, and maybe that'll get worse and worse over time, but frankly I think that the business model means he's screwed anyway. Signing for spotify naturally puts him outside of the mainstream conversation (which isn't paywalled) so his cultural relevance is going to slide, erroding his negotiating position. In tandem with that is Spotify's push into podcasts work he'll be just 1 voice amongst many that spotify now has sway over, if it doesn't work Spotify won't care to keep Rogan around since they'll drop that aspect of the business model. Either was, Rogan's negotiating position peaked the day of the deal he signed, and he's probably aware of that. Short of someone like Apple waking up and deciding to do content, no one will offer Rogan that deal again.

I worked for a tech company until recently that had allowed a relatively small group of activist employees to trigger HR policies that have been extremely detrimental to the morale and bottom line of the company.

Cowardly HR departments who don't recognize that, by and large, the activist employees are mediocre at best, rather than remotely productive employees, has made things worse. Also, companies like Spotify seem to spawn an odd lack of self-awareness amongst many employees about how utterly replaceable they actually are. Spotify is a video and audio streaming service. There isn't anything novel about that anymore, as proved by how rapidly HBO and Disney were able to roll out platforms which do the same thing.

Even worse, the HR don't recognize this either.

I can personally attest to the fact that the new CEO who was my last straw at my last gig care far more about his personal reputation at his Marin County country club than the bottom line for the shareholders. He acted accordingly, and the board of directors also care far more about their reputations.

> Cowardly HR departments who don't recognize that, by and large, the activist employees are mediocre at best, rather than remotely productive employees, has made things worse.

This feels like you're projecting your opinion of these people and their political beliefs (which it appears you disagree with) onto their entire character and acting as if your opinion of them is the reality of the situation. Are there activist employees that are poor performers? Probably. But it feels more like you're trying to paint an entire subset of employees negatively because you disagree with their political stances.

I'm simply pointing out that people who are into their actual work, as opposed to people who are into their work environments and cultures, are more productive. People obsess about managing time, but it's really about managing finite mental energy. Activist employees expend mental energy on social causes which don't benefit the bottom line of the company. I'm not saying they shouldn't be activists, I'm just saying they should do it on their own time, not at work and in the workplace. Exactly zero of the engineers at my company who were leading the charge on this stuff were standouts. Average performers at best, mostly sort of QA material and nothing more. I don't have real data, obviously, but my anecdotal, non-scientific survey of friends at Google, Amazon, Netflix, etc has shown a pattern of lower status employees being attracted to these activities.

I don't actually disagree with a lot of the goals of the activist employees at my former Boulder-based tech company. I simply disagree with them using the HR department to impose their views and beliefs onto the majority of employees who don't want it, in a way that becomes disruptive and distracting from making money. At the end of the quarter, the assholes in charge who wouldn't shut up about equity are still making hundreds of times what the average employee makes, and will fire anyone if the numbers aren't what they promised in the earnings forecast. The social justice initiatives seem to be designed to turn the rank and file against each other, instead of having them ask if their CEO is really worth 300 software engineers in value to the company.

I think the idea is like, if you're at a 10 person startup you don't have people like this because the company can't survive if people are spending their time on these issues. No one has time to make an initiative to rename whitelist to allowlist. It only starts occurring once you have enough corporate stability to nurture it.

> Or is it rather a few employees who, emboldened by cancel-culture, will toss their political agenda around the office while other employees, intimidated by cancel-culture, shy away from calling out the obvious BS?

This is it. The intimidation is real; look at what happened to James Damore.

What is your interpretation of what happened to James Damore? I would guess you and I have different opinions on what exactly took place, but I'm not sure either of us can presume that our opinions on those situations reflect the ground truth of what actually happened.

My interpretation was that Damore said that forcing 50/50 outcomes is discrimination, and more broadly the claim that all gender disparities are entirely caused by bias is not correct. He laid out specific discriminatory policies (representation OKRs, coaching candidates for interviews but only if they belong to underrepresented demographics) and asked the company to stop.

The depiction of the memo in the media was that he said women weren't as intelligent as men. Even though he explicitly called out that this is not what he was saying, he referred only to innate factors influencing preferences not intelligence.

This feels like a lot of speculation without evidence. According to the article, nobody knows what's happening and why.

> Whom does Spotify try to aquisice here?

YouTube always claims they're demonetizing videos for their advertisers. i.e companies threatening to either boycott advertising on the platform entirely, or ones who don't their products appear in videos with certain content.

Maybe Spotify is doing it for the same reason?

According to this [1] Spotify makes 91% of their revenue and nearly 100% of their profits based on premium membership, not ads. I find it unlikely that they're messing with their users' interests to make advertisers happy that make up a rounding error in the profits.

[1] https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/120314/spoti...

Interesting. Then perhaps its higher ups in Spotify who might be afraid of getting accused of hosting content that isn't in favor with the MSM and ruling regime in the US?

I (N=1) would seriously consider cancelling my Spotify subscription if Spotify kept pushing Alex Jones. It's not that far fetched.

What do you mean by "pushing"? Recommending him in your home page, with no option to disable the said recommendations? Or just hosting him at all on their platform?

Do you have the same opinion about YouTube, which has every political spectrum and its polar opposite on the same platform?

I mean “sponsoring” or “enabling” to a level beyond just existing in their catalog does.

I think it’s great that YouTube, Facebook, Twitter etc also ban Alex Jones yes. I see the risk of tech platforms acting as giant censors to be the smaller problem here.

The threat of being dropped from the iOS app store for having offensive content would certainly motivate them.

How's that different from the YouTube app which hosted the same content for years?

At my own company it's very much this. As someone not directly impacted I would take a huge risk arguing against woke bullies for very little reward. Maybe when I'm on my way out I'll feel more comfortable sharing my opinion, until then I keep my mouth shut and cash the check. Write good code sometimes too..

I'm pretty sure I read corporations are supposed to try and act in the interest of their shareholders. The preferences of users, content creators, and staff are all secondary to shareholders.

Investors and especially advertisers may also pressure to remove content.

> will toss their political agenda around the office while other employees, intimidated by cancel-culture, shy away from calling out the obvious BS

This is why it spreads so fast. You have one person who is loud, assertive and aggressive. And most people just want to avoid politics so they nod their heads.

You forgot a forth group: advertisers.

Nitpicking but it's "who" not "whom". One tries to acquiesce someone, so "who" is used as it's the direct object, not the indirect object.

Spotify acquiesces to a pressure group of some kind, not the other way around. If we are nitpicking..

- “whom” is for all objects, no direct/indirect distinction

- I’ve never heard “acquiesce” used with a direct object and dictionaries don’t seem to have either

- but they said “aquisice” anyway so who knows

So yeah, it’s needlessly flowery and incorrect (name a more iconic duo), but the “whom” isn’t this time (although “who” would also be good).

Completely agree it's coming from employees and staff who believe their political ideology is the gospel and implementing cancel culture until there is no opposition is their goal. This largely stems from the bubble and lack of diversity in political ideology in the bay area and Europe.

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