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Comment by fareesh | Hacker News Reader

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.

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>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.

> 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.

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.

well said...

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