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Comment by unfocussed_mike | Hacker News Reader

You mean in the interests of free speech, artists who you think have an inflated sense of their own importance should necessarily sacrifice their freedom of speech for someone who is parroting dangerous untruths?

Pulling their music from Spotify is speech. Why can they _not_ do it? What makes what they are doing a "horrible precedent"?

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It's a bit of tolerance paradox, in order to protect free speech we should avoid the free speech that want to censor others, otherwise we all lose the right. So of course pulling their music is their right, but it stops being acceptable when they pull their rights in order to prevent others from speaking. I am of the idea that we must tolerate free speech up to the point where this free speech is used to prevent others from speaking, that's the issue in this case

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

-- On the other hand what does this people want? Like I have 3 shots, I have done whatever the government and science asked, I did the first 2 booster and I've listened to the campaign where they said that it would lead us to be open and live again, then we went again in lockdown closed inside (I'm european), despite the vast majority having the vaccines (85%++), Then there was a third shot, now they're talking about the fourth one, meanwhile people still goes to ICU and people is still dying, and still getting infected (100k a day), I want to understand science and politicians, but at this point can we just like following blindly whatever is said and maybe start asking some questions? Can we start having some doubts about effectiveness of meds and/or measures or we just need to keep silent?

A classic bit on the theme is Taleb’s “The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dictatorship of the Small Minority”

https://nassimtaleb.org/2016/08/intolerant-wins-dictatorship...

This isnt a free speech issue. Neil Young is not the government nor is spotify. If Neil Young didn't want to be on the same tv show as joe rogan nobody would care. This amounts to the exact same thing.

I don't believe that free speech only applies to governments, free speech also applies to the general population, also because we don't elect toasters and coffee machines to governments, and elected people have the power to change regulations and amendments, so I feel like attack on free speech need to be fought starting from our neighbours

About Neil Young not being willing to participate along with other people, I would appreciate more Neil Young to go to participate with people and counter-argumenting their ideas with words, instead of being a little kid acting like "Gne gne gne I don't want to talk to you, teacher please can you send him out of the class?", I mean we're adult and capable of expressing complex ideas and counter-arguments, there's no need to running away, imho, but he's free all he wants to be a kid, just let's not consider him a paladine of anything

So freedom of speech only exists if government is involved? I don't think that's correct.

These artists are attempting to use pressure to silence someone else. That's 100% a "free speech" issue.

Consider one thing that I found extremely upsetting, as european, like the BBC was attacked for spreading misinformation only to have REPORTED news of people protesting in cities against lockdown measures

This comment speaks like it was written as a joke. Why pretend like anyone's even remotely considering banning Joe Rogan from Spotify? Why pretend like there's a shortage of research? There's a vast amount of scientific research you could peruse if you have questions. There's no societal need for ignorant bullshit.

To be honest I have no time to waste with you, also because people who just avoid whole segments of articles in order to be right are usually either not genuinely taking part of the conversation or they lack comprehension skills, so one ends up being like Don Quixote fighting windmills

Quoted word by word from the article: "Last Monday, Young announced that he had asked his management and record label to remove his music from Spotify in protest of the streaming service's decision to host Joe Rogan's podcast"

If that doesn't mean that he wants to ban Joe Rogan from spotify, then what does it mean?

It means he isn't pleased with Spotify, and as such wants to remove his music. Pretty obvious. Hypothetically, imagine Spotify lost so much money losing Neil Young they remove the entire podcast. Young still might not come back because the point isn't about banning Rogan, the point is there's a real consequence for the misinformation they paid for.

I didn't actually mention free speech in my comment, which (although I do passionately believe in it!) I don't consider the main issue here. If a precedent is set for artists being rewarded for demanding that other artists be removed from platforms, where will it end? How will the line be drawn? How much content will the people listening on these platforms be deprived of simply because of rivalries and the like? It doesn't seem like it's in the interest of listeners or customers to behave this way.

In what sense are Mitchell and Young being _rewarded_? They're going to lose some money, right? And they've certainly lost a few Joe Rogan fans.

Both of them simply asserted their right not to share a platform with someone they believe is doing significant harm. They owe him and their (Spotify's) customers nothing in particular.

It'll either work out for them and they'll get what they want, or it won't.

He makes 600,000 a month from his own streaming service. Some protests are commercials.

They would be rewarded if Spotify dropped Joe Rogan to appease them.

Yes let them exercise their free speech so they can collectively silence others; You're on to something.

And speaking of parroting, I'll agree that much of what joe and by proxy his guests say is dangerous. Where we disagree is whether or not these things are "untrue" and to whom they are dangerous towards.

But it _is_ free speech, isn't it?

There are plenty of examples through history of mass speech overturning things.

And there are plenty of boycotts organised by both left and right wing media the world over.

In the last four or five years, Trump urged boycotts of MLB, Coke, Goodyear, AT&T, Delta, JP Morgan Chase, Viacom, Merck, Cisco the NFL.

Trump _supporters_ (major and minor) have urged boycotts of Meetup, Nike, Nordstrom, Starbucks, Netflix, Pepsi, Nabisco, Anheuser Busch, Amazon, Ben & Jerry's, Apple, Ford, Bank of America... and Tucker Carlson is currently nursing very public hurt feelings about anthropomorphic chocolate CGI characters.

This stuff happens. It's how change of all kinds happens. It shouldn't be surprising if it is aimed at Joe Rogan, since he's so fond of being outspoken.

> parroting dangerous untruths

Like what? I feel like almost everyone parroting this accusation against Joe Rogan doesn’t actually listen to his podcast.

There’s so much discussion of Joe Rogan and the problem of what he’s actually said is curiously, conspicuously missing from the conversation.

Just as one example, Rolling Stone quotes him as saying:

“This doctor was saying ivermectin is 99 percent effective in treating Covid, but you don’t hear about it because you can’t fund vaccines when it’s an effective treatment”

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/covid-misi...

No responsible doctor said that -- it's a two-part untruth. First off, there's not the evidence to support the 99% claim. Second, it's not really particularly evident that an effective treatment for a disease has much impact on a search for a vaccine; there are effective treatments for HIV but the search for a vaccine continues, for example.

It's dangerous to make claims like that without evidence.

Bonus content:

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/joe-rogan-...

This needs to be drilled harder: People can express their views until cows come home. Knock yourself out.

But, that's precisely what Young is not doing. He wants to silence (and deny the FoS) Rogan. That is the distinction that keeps being ignored in this thread and elsewhere.

Nobody's FoS is under threat here. FoS does not entitle access to a broadcast medium, i.e. Spotify or YouTube. FoS simply means being able to publish your views without government censorship.

If you create your own newspaper, Spotify or YouTube you also control its editorial policy (what gets selected for publication, what gets taken down). But you can not demand that the New York Times, Spotify or Google change their editorial policy to let you publish your views. Access is a privilege, not a right.

What Young is doing here is calling in question Spotify's editorial policy for giving Rogan such a visible position on the platform. He is within his rights to do so. IF Spotify had removed Rogan instead, Rogan would need to find a new publisher but his FoS would not have been violated at any point.

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