Spotify clearly cares about music - hence the entire history of the company & product.
When one creator on a platform threatens an ultimatum to remove themselves or another creator, that is a rude and aggressive unprovoked attack.
Even if Young had 10x the financial value to Spotify as JRE, I believe they still would've made the same decision: "Do not negotiate with terrorists."
The decisionmaker for who gets to be on Spotify is Spotify. Not Neil Young, not Joe Rogan, not Drake, not Ed Sheeran, not anybody.
There is nothing wrong with what Rogan has been criticized by Young for; other than many people including Young being ideologically possessed in the opposite direction.
Disagreement is not grounds for censorship.
In any case, it was Young who issued an ultimatum. His music or Joe's podcast, off the platform. There is no room for a compromise there - this is a rude and violent threat.
I agree with you that it's not terrorism, however.
The principle of "don't negotiate with terrorists" is applicable far beyond literal terrorism and I think it's exactly the moral calculus necessary for Spotify to reach the conclusion they did. Network members who think they can yield violent ultimatums to control the administrating entity are toxic to all of their peers.
Facts are not stories you can agree or disagree on.
You likely think the same of me.
If you could magically be granted "objective" factual understanding, your point would be right, and I would agree with you. But you haven't been, in reality you do not know the facts for certain, neither do any of the 270 doctors/etc who wrote that letter trying to censor Joe, neither does Joe, neither does Robert Malone or any other heterodox intellectual on the topic, and neither does Fauci or any other orthodox intellectual on the topic.
Besides mathematics/logical fundamentals, nobody knows facts for sure. Outside of physics we aren't even quite sure. To pretend that you know the facts, and that you know Joe and his guests are wrong, and that their falsehoods are dangerous --- this is altogether delusional, quite frankly. You may very well be right, but you do not know that you are, you cannot know that you are. The subject matter is too complicated.
My apologies for the harsh words. This is how it is.
---
Edit: and no, I am not being flippant. I am being objective.
You have no idea what you're talking about, which is what's so fucked up about this whole situation. This is all a dystopian cliche. Opinions are not misinformation, and looking at opposing evidence and arguments is not misinformation. It never was, and never will be. The only people who ever claimed such things are historically disgraced totalitarians.
Misinformation comes from states and organizations with ulterior motives who twist and hide the truth for their own gain. It's about power.
Crying out about how "dangerous" it is to have a real discussion that you don't like is ridiculously absurd. Are you saying adults are too stupid to think for themselves, or should not be allowed to take calculated risks? Do you have some kind of proof that having discussions is bad for individuals and/or communities in some way?
There are six in here: https://www.insider.com/joe-rogan-podcast-episodes-that-spre...
Further support of the first in that list: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/rogan-dont-need-to-worry-v...
Further support of the fifth: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/aug/31/joe-rogan/...
A separate 7th item: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/jul/26/joe-rogan/...
prohobo, you may wish to read the links for concrete answers to your request. The how is answered very directly, especially considering the bottom three links are all fact-checking sites that explain the how and the why.
But if you don't care to, we can move on.
What they do is make arguments against their points, many of which aren't verifiable or are just opinions.
I'm all for removing things that are empirically and logically "dangerous misinformation", but we have to actually prove it empirically and logically first. Can you do that?
I think the officials are so afraid that any discussion of nuance [1] would frighten people away from the vaccines that they simply avoid talking about it entirely, and sometimes call to outright suppress any such discussions as "misinformation" and label these people as "anti-vaxx".
[1] https://vinayprasadmdmph.substack.com/p/uk-now-reports-myoca...
2) Prove it's dangerous: either for individuals or communities.
Proving something incorrect is proving proving the negative. That’s not how people engage in good faith argumentation.
I’ll add, a traditional definition of “incorrect information” would primarily focus on factual accuracy over motivation.
Why is it necessary to prove intentionality to prove incorrectness?
All of this is before we acknowledge that you will never accept something as proven false, as proven intentional, or as proven harmful.
Your standard is meaningless because it’s both incoherent and unmeetable.
It’s also characteristic of arguments like this and why the ‘bullshit asymmetry’ concept exists. Trying to meet it is a distraction that simply serves to give your argument credibility because people engage with it in trying (hopelessly) to meet your asymmetric epistemically standards.
Explain what the danger is, and how it is manifesting.
And intentionality is absolutely relevant to this, considering we are essentially judging a conversation between two people. Does the same conversation in a bar constitute misinformation? When does it go from conversation to declaration? When does opinion become misinformation?
I'm not currently interested in whether what they're saying is true or not, I'm interested in whether it can be considered misinformation in spirit of the meaning of the word. If their intention is to discuss something sincerely, then it's not misinformation - it's opinion.
Good ideas do not require the censorship of bad ideas.
You decide whether you want to continue paying your premium plan. Spotify will acquire the content it believes is best for all users. You do not control their decisions just because you pay the subscription.
Can anyone recommend a good alternative? Preferably with a decent selection of obscure metal. I'd like to try some other paid sevices before reverting to piracy.
I just know that MOG’s selling point for a long while was it’s huge metal library and license set; I see no reason for that to have been lost through its MOG->Beats->Apple Music transition.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/neil-youngs-long-record-of-spr...
Maybe people should just be allowed to have these conversations because the paranoid serve a useful purpose.
It's fine that they've decided to pivot to being a podcast company with a sideline in music - apparently that's where the money is, and it's a free market. But if they're going to take a political position by signing exclusive contracts with and heavily promoting podcast hosts, they've lost all claim to be a neutral party, and can't expect artists - and customers - to remain with them.
Tangent, but this is actually obnoxious. I never seem to get the “new releases for you” on my home screen anymore, but every-time I open the app I see I slew of podcasts I don’t give a damn about despite me slipping through maybe one podcast episode in my entire account history.
Spotify clearly cares about the money they can make managing music rights.
If they cared about *music* their playlists would be curated by humans. If they cared about music they'd be working to increase musician payout across the board, rather than push it down as low as possible like any other business expense. If they cared about music, they'd be creating opportunities to make, share and enjoy music: instead what they focus on is engagement, sponsorship and rights management.
That is definitely not clear any more.
As someone who doesn't listen to podcasts via Spotify, the UI is literally unusable for music nowadays.
Your post ignores the recent and not-recent history of the company:
- CEO equates musicians "doing well" with musicians creating a lot content quickly ..: https://ultimateclassicrock.com/spotify-ceo-rockers-respond/ - undermines music as an artform for the sake of high profit - blocking a prominent musician in favor of a talk-show comedian / host. Talk Radio trumping Music. - purportedly poor-quality recommendation engine - purportedly large amount of ads per unit of content
Spotify simply hasn't given in to blackmail. If Joe Rogan said he'd leave Spotify if they don't kick Neil Young out and then Neil Young was kicked out they would've chosen a podcast over Neil Young.
I think on both issues Spotify wins. Financially they probably do, and they get to show they don't bow to hysterical artists. That's a good thing in the long run.
Ultimately it's not a question of revenue but whether Spotify has to follow the footsteps of Meta/Facebook and YouTube to moderate content on their platform. This was largely a non-issue before they started their exclusive deals with the likes of Rogan - the onus was on music labels and publishers.
But now Spotify's position as a content platform has been thrust into the spotlight and will likely have to invest in content curation (e.g. algorithms, human raters). Furthermore if other artists follow in Young's footsteps, then this could get quite messy.
Freedom of speech includes the freedom of wrong speech. In fact, it's wrong speech that most needs protection.
This doesn't make the example invalid, mind you. But I consider it a warning to be extremely careful and skeptical when equating 'dangerous' speech to immediate physical damage.
Free speech means that the gov can not put you in jail because of that but private people can punish you for spreading fake news. This is there freedom.
Yes you can cry then that this is cancel culture but every time someone cries about cancel culture usually its because the person said something stupid which people did not like and now want's to take away there freedom of speech.
But 'cancel culture' wouldn't be an issue if that was all - if individual people simply chose to stop associating with the wrong-thinker. Not even if a lot of people did at once.
The problem is that when those people are not individual fellow citizens, but the "Trust & Safety Team" or the "Anti-Evil Team" at $Megacorporation, they don't just stop doing business with you - they can effectively cut you off from most of the rest of the world, whether or not the rest of the world wants it.
Simply put, the problem is that they have too much power. They have the same freedom of association as private citizens, but their ability to punish people is incomparably greater and isn't subject to the same restraint as the government's.
If Facebook/Google/Amazon/Cloudflare deny your their services you can still always find a new provider (see Gab). If the government shuts you down, you need to emigrate to start back up.
Sure, its a PIA to re-setup a service meant for AWS not on AWS but that's really the core of AWS's offering. Big Tech is not the grocery store, you will live without twitter, you will not live without food.
The power a corperation has is governed by the Charter that was (now implicitly) granted by the State they're incorperated in. If you think they have too much power in their Charter complain to that state.
Quite. I loudly support breaking up the megacorps and try to avoid depending on them, for what little I can do as a European citizen.
if the intention is to spread lies - then I would say no. Otherwise very much yes, because who would be the authority to determine the facts from the fake?
We abolished the power of the inquisition some centuries before, because of bad experience with the concept of holy truth or canon.
Science is an open process, where it is clear that some positions held today, will be abolished in the future, with new data.
Or is the concept to let only certified scientists speak up? Well, that opens up the question, who gets to decide who is one.
I think it is very dangerous to influence that process, with state authority declaring what is right and what is wrong.
And in this specific case it seems to be about an "official" scientist Dr. Malone(who was invited) who might have gone off the rails quite some time ago. But it is still important for people do decide on who to trust, than installing a government institution to do so. Because I do not know molecular biology - but I like to know, that one of the people involved with the invention of mRNA vaccines strongly advises against it. And I can read about it all and then decide for me it is likely mostly tinfoil hat area. But if the government would activly suppress and censor his opinion - I might think, there is actually more behind.
Honest and open discussion is not disinformation, by definition.
Rogan et Al. Know they spew nonsense, they don't believe their shit, it's just for the lolz. They are chaos agents enjoying seeing the world crumble while making money of it.
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/30/world/coronavirus-who-mas...
> "There is no specific evidence to suggest that the wearing of masks by the mass population has any potential benefit. In fact, there's some evidence to suggest the opposite in the misuse of wearing a mask properly or fitting it properly,"
If we banned all the maskers then, and all the antimaskers a few months later, who'd be left?
Music is about rebellion, often. Young's music was, at the time it was made.
Joe Rogan is also about rebellion. Young just doesn't like his flavor of it, so he's throwing a temper tantrum. Sad, really.
Dana Carvey does a great bit about 'Every Neil Young song you've ever heard'
As for influence, why do people care what a daily pot smoking artist, who was reportedly expelled from college, thinks about politics anyway?
Why do people care what any artist thinks about politics?
Yet people give outsize weight to a pothead college dropout artist for some reason.
What is your point here?
Yet he's trying to bully Spotify and Joe Rogan?
This is 100% political.
I don't agree with his ultimatum to Spotify, but fair enough if he feels that way.
This is also quite a funny video, with Jimmy Fallon covering Neil Young, with Neil Young.
Sure, if every Neil Young song you’ve ever heard are his two most popular ones.