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Comment by torstenvl | Hacker News Reader

Perhaps you didn't know, but Neil Young tried to get Spotify to deplatform Joe Rogan (i.e., to cancel his Spotify distribution deal), and used his repertoire as an ultimatum.

EDIT: I'm being downvoted to oblivion for stating an objective fact. This is unbecoming of HN. I'm out.

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Is he not free to do that? I mean you can agree with it or not but how is that not a perfectly valid thing for a private individual to do? I don't have a philosophical objection to this.

Young is saying "I have some number of people who listen to my content and if you want to distribute my content you have to do this thing". Spotify said "no thank you". Where's the problem?

The linguistic choice of "deplatform[ing]" is such a funny one: in any other era, we'd call withholding one's business a "boycott."

But the history of the word "boycott" in the US has a distinctly anti-racial hue, and people who yammer about deplatforming seem to take extreme pains to avoid any comparison between today's boycotts and those good old lunch counters.

I've never heard this before. I and people I know boycott things all the time. There's also the popular "Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement"...

AFAIK boycott is temporary but de-platforming is permanent. -- closing a contract.

I don't think closing a contract is a permanent thing. You can always reopen it or start a new one if and when the complaints have been addressed. That seems to be what most people have in mind, at least in my experience.

On closing a contract a new one is needed, unlike boycott.

Is that not speech?

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