Spotify deletes 70 Joe Rogan episodes
jremissing.com
jremissing.com
JR sold his catalog of intellectual property (podcast episodes) of his own free will and was paid very well for it: about $100M from what I can gather. What Spotify chooses to do with it is completely up to them, even if they bought it with the express intention of "burning" it all, i.e. never broadcasting it, that would still not be censorship. That would be nothing but exercising their intellectual property rights, that they paid for, just like buying the rights to a song that you hate to stop that specific recording from ever being played again is within your right, or even negotiating with the artist to never play it again.
He signed a "multi-year" exclusive deal (the details are fuzzy, for obvious reasons) which means he sold his trademark and time for money, which is how the market works.
Exactly what he sold (NDA, limitations on his speech in his free time etc.) we'll probably never know, but whoever calls this "censorship" needs a reality check. There exists plenty of proper censorship in the world if you look for it, and this isn't it.
this is the new "freedom of speech" sentiment
Is this double negative intentional?
Freedom of speech has never meant the right to force platforms to broadcast your message.
Nobody is violating JR’s free speech, Spotify is just acting within the framework of the agreement they made with JR.
Whether that involves only the podcast itself or limits on what he can say regarding their interactions, we don’t know because the deal is not public. But nobody forced JR to sign anything, including any potential NDAs.
Hosting that can handle load and hackers for normal people is extremely difficult.
That's a hell of a diss for everyone pouring their blood, sweat, and tears into Bing and DDG.
just because your average developer today lives and breathes AWS and PaaS doesn't mean it's impossible to use the bare metal
That's simple enough, but it's also simplistic because it assumes that property rights are the only thing we should care about.
Which value is more important - property rights (which depend on socialized services like justice and enforcement) or free speech (which thrive by removing regulation)?
Don't ask us, ask J.R.. He remains free to return the 100 million to Spotify and broadcast his stupid crap elsewhere.
This is a non-issue.
There's also another issue: the customer wanting to listen to those podcasts and who valued them as part of their Spotify subscription.
And that's not due to free market "those didn't were listened to enough, so we took them off" (that wasn't the case, and even if it was storage and distribution costs are negligible anyway, they could still keep them in perpetuity).
Instead that customer got shafted because "some" forced Spotify's hand.
How do we know this?
Many markets show that they work best with a goldilocks-level of just-right regulation, and the level depends on the market.
And they did. They published those episodes.
Consistently with a free market, customers of Spotify should also be able to do with them as they pleased - listen to them or not, or even leave Spotify in protest.
Instead, some pressure groups, the media, and a couple of unrelated musicians forced Spotify to unpublish those.
How did anyone "force" Spotify to do anything? Various people put public pressure on Spotify and Spotify took the action that it presumably thought was optimal for its bottom line. Which companies do all the time.
By making it costly not to do it, not in a free market (vote with wallets) way, but in a "will hurt you with bad publicity, government pressure, etc" way. Forcing doesn't need to be a gun in the head of the CEO.
>Various people put public pressure on Spotify and Spotify took the action that it presumably thought was optimal for its bottom line. Which companies do all the time.
Yes, like corporations did when they censored works because of pressure groups, like Tipper Gore's, stuff that promoted "homosexuality" or "decadent" black music in the past, etc.
Doesn't mean it was left to the individual customers to decide, or that corporations deemed the works they sold as unprofitable in themselves (that is, not selling).
Only unprofitable as in "not worth the trouble".
Which is a totally different thing.
Wait, that’s exactly what needs to be happening in order to call it “forcing.” If there is a (difficult) choice, it’s not force.
Yes, I agree with almost everything you said. However, the issue is that platforms are consolidated. Depending on your chosen format of content, there are only 2-3 viable platforms to reach people - and for some types of content, only one.
And if those very small number of platforms decide to, or are pressured to, delist content or a content creator, this is bad. Okay, you don't want to call it 'censorship', so lets invent a new term - 'kindacensorship'. Kindacensorship is identical to censorship. It has all the properties of censorship and all the negative effects of censorship.
If we had our present day internet infrastructure in the 1950s, there would have been moral outrage at, for example, gay content. And youtube and twitch and reddit would be kindacensoring all gay creators, and all who say that maybe homosexuality isn't so bad, and everything culturally adjacent to these topics. Because the majority demands it. And the majority would have demanded it, because that was the culture of the 1950s.
Then, all those gay creators would have been forced off all platforms, all internet infrastructure, and from all types of mainstream media - tv, radio, etc. Yes, they could have still written their thoughts, but it is an absolute guarantee that they'd languish in obscurity, reaching only each other, but not the masses.
(If we had our present day internet infrastructure in the 1900s, there would have been moral outrage at people talking about desegragation. Or wanting to abolish the monarchy. Or communism.)
Is it not obvious that this would have been bad? Kindacensorship would have stopped dissenters, would have halted the social evolution. And this is exactly what is happening now. The only reason silencing gay people sounds bad, and silencing Joe Rogan sounds good, is because the one message is culturally acceptable, and the other has not yet passed to the Overton window of acceptability. And if we allow kindacensorhip to grow, we will culturally stagnate. All dissenters will be silenced.
Kindacensorship is identical to censorship in form, and in function. Who cares that it's not the government banning books, and it's a (very) small cabal of technological companies deciding what can and cannot be said? Is this somehow better? I genuinely don't think it is.
And I don't know what I'm proposing, exactly. Not sure I know how I'd renegotiate the social contract. I just know that I'm seeing kindacensorship everywhere and it. is. bad.
If this is a battle you want to fight, I might suggest starting with the book banning efforts by Republicans (the actual government) across many states that’s going on right now.
Maybe he shouldn't have. And yet I am saying, in this world in which he did, Spotify shouldn't censor him.
>If this is a battle you want to fight, I might suggest starting with the book banning efforts by Republicans
Yes, book banning is also bad, I agree. (???)
Joe Rogan made a decision to take the money and give in to a corporation trying to make a podcast monopoly a reality. Who is to complain when the inevitable abuse of power ensues? If it didn't happen now, when podcasts are still open and standardized, it would've happened later once podcasts became proprietary.
Everyone isn't always going to agree with you, and they have their own rights.
You're having a hard time articulating what you mean because it doesn't really make sense. If you can force someone to publish and promote something they don't want to, they can force you to publish and promote something you don't want to. The cause of liberty has not been served if this happens.
But what you're describing isn't some historical hypothetical nor is the current situation some brand-new phenomenon; it's literally how "content" has worked for more or less the entirety of human history. There in fact was no easily available gay content in the 1950s because society and culture demanded it not be available in the relatively small number of places available at the time where content could be consumed. Not only was gay content censored in the 1950s, but it was censored far more effectively than anything today since people had much more limited ways of obtaining content. Forget having to find a less popular podcast platform, if you were shut out of the handful of TV networks, radio stations, and newspapers, basically the only way you could have a voice is handing out leaflets on a street corner.
If the concern is that people be able to express unpopular ideas to a wide audience, we are in a far, far better place than we were at any point in history. Sure, there aren't unlimited platforms that allow you to easily reach millions and millions of people, but a few decades ago even wildly popular content would struggle to find that kind of audience and most things that were even mildly alternative would struggle to reach an audience at all.
I think the reason some people interpret the current state of affairs as some horrific free speech backsliding, even though all available evidence suggests people in general have more of a voice than ever, is that the voices that attract negative attention now are different. Historically it was usually content that was too "liberal" (for lack of a better word) that was censored, as with your gay content example. Now though, viewpoints associated with the more conservative[1] parts of society are suddenly facing unpopularity and it feels like a new thing simply because it involves people who aren't used to being on the receiving end of that kind of soft-censorship or whatever you want to call it.
My intent is not to take a specific position on whether such soft-censorship is good or bad, but if we're going to productively discuss the topic it seems like treating it as a brand new phenomenon is unlikely to get us to a useful place. In particular because in misdiagnosing the problem, we end up going down a path that's less about free expression and more about conservative ideas being entitled to a platform.
[1] Since I'm sure someone will object to this characterization, I realize Joe Rogan is generally not considered a conservative. However the views he's expressed that have caused the current Spotify trouble are definitely associated with conservatives in America.
It's not like Spotify is sending hit squads out to shake down artists that don't join the racket, or harass studios and sites that host content they disagree with.
There is a lot you can do with a big microphone, but perhaps the Internet isn't and never will be the utopia that people imagined it would be. In a different world where large tech companies were completely hands off and governments embraced a speech free for all, many people will still feel that they don't fit in mainstream spaces and will need to find another forum.
Yes, I agree, this used to be how things worked. Counter-culture movement appears, gains some followers, some leaders, gains momentum, and gradually or overnight breaks into the mainstream.
And this is precisely what happened here - a counter-culture movement tired with the establishment, a lot of followers, some leaders, some momentum - but the moment where change would actually happen is now impossible.
>alternate spaces
What alternate spaces? If Joe Rogan moves his podcast to Apple Music, they are going to ban him. If he had stayed on youtube, they would have removed his channel. If he creates his own app, it's going to be banned in the play store and app store. If he moves to a smaller, existing app, it's going to be protested and banned.
Yes, it's technically possible, there are some options. But they're all terrible. They are not a way to reach the mainstream.
There is no shortage of broadcast platforms. They are not consolidated. In the podcast space alone there are apple, Spotify, YouTube music, stitcher, and self-hosting. And then there are all the non-podcast broadcast modalities.
C'mon, you know these claimants only mean "I want a free market for me".
I don't think this is some irreconcilable gotcha. I support the free market as a tool when it delivers on the benefits that it can provide. Those are increasing choice and decreasing costs through increased competition and commoditization. If problems show up I'm happy to have legislation introduced to tackle those, such as not allowing food with known toxins to be sold.
It's like any tool. I support cars when they're used to deliver on the benefits that they can provide; getting people from point A to point B, and giving them the freedom to move between arbitrary locations. When they're used to run pedestrians over then I don't support that usage, and I will support legislation that limits the use of the tool in that manner.
Likewise if the free market is used as a way to reduce the availability of content, I can be against that while still supporting it as a guiding concept.
As for whether or not reducing the availability of information is immoral, that obviously depends on what the information in question is. I’m unfamiliar with Joe Rogan’s work so I have no opinion on this particular case.
Edit: Based on the replies I wasn’t sufficiently clear. I don’t believe the Rogan deal is immoral because I have no belief about it’s morality or lack thereof at all. If you insist on a moral judgment that I feel ill-informed to make, then I’ll speculate that the deal probably was moral.
I'm all in favour of reducing copyright power/length, but outside of mandatory licensing there are very few circumstances where locking IP up would be outside the scope.
Rogan wanted to give control over his catalog in exchange for heaping gobs of money. He didn't have to do this if he didn't want to (he was already independently wealthy), but he did want to, so he did it, and was not harmed in any way.
Then that's not the "free market" that you support, just "markets."
In a free market, the laws and forces of supply and demand are free from any intervention by a government or other authority, and from all forms of economic privilege, monopolies and artificial scarcities
From this simple snippet, we can conclude three things:
- government and other authorities are only limited to not interfere with supply and demand; enforcing product standards does not make a market non-free
- good anti-monopoly legislation is an example of the government working towards the free market, not against it
- Anything involving copyright and patents is by definition not a free market
Essentially IP protection is encouraging creation and innovation by preventing someone who didn’t do the work from simply stealing it and profiting without paying the creator. This is certainly over-simplified, but one way of viewing IP protections is that it’s trying to balance multiple freedoms, and that a free market with no regulation at all is not actually free for everyone. Having no protections on product standards is a loss of freedom for consumers. Having no protections on intellectual property is a loss of freedom for creators (and, the thinking goes, would be a net drain on the economy).
Here are some hastily googled arguments in favor of viewing IP protection as part of a free market:
https://www.aei.org/technology-and-innovation/intellectual-p...
https://cip2.gmu.edu/2013/11/14/copyright-is-still-essential...
Why’s that? I don’t follow. How does black markets being defined as illegal imply there are legal ones?
BTW, don’t take my word for it, just look it up.
“A black market, underground economy or shadow economy is a clandestine market or series of transactions that has some aspect of illegality or is characterized by some form of noncompliant behavior with an institutional set of rules. If the rule defines the set of goods and services whose production and distribution is prohibited by law, non-compliance with the rule constitutes a black market trade since the transaction itself is illegal.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_market
Your statement "black markets are not markets without legislation" logically implies such existence. I regard legislation as a governmental act and in my opinion you stretched its meaning to an informal agreement between market participants.
But, if you meant legislation as some kind of unwritten law, that breaks state laws, i would fully agree.
To clarify my argument, I mean for those reading this post to either push for that change in the dictionary (the usual way: by being more clear on their definition when sing it and encouraging others to use their definition and do the same), or to stop muddying the waters (and possibly use an updated term).
Joe Rogan being on Spotify is entirely about limiting the availability of his podcast. They're paying him to not make his episodes available outside of Spotify.
It could be about fear (of being back at a place where he wanted food) It could be about legacy (he wants to give the money to children, family, whatever) It could be about money (I will have felt I’ve made it when I have a Yacht)…but he seems to be a smarter person than that. It could be about not ever having to work doing anything he doesn’t want to ever again. It could be about distributing is thoughts as far and wide as he can.
but just saying it was ‘ultimately a matter of money’ is a non-statement.
Spotify made him a tremendous offer.
Not necessarily. He could have seen the writing on the wall with Google/YouTube and wanted a platform where he would not be censored ... and may have miscalculated.
People seem to forget that he had an ownership stake in the UFC, which sold for over 4 billion dollars. Also, an ownership stake in Onnit (cofounder), which sold for untold millions to Unilever. $100MM is a lot of money, but he was very, very wealthy before that deal. It's not like he was scraping by on Ramen noodles before Spotify came along.
1. Also "I signed a 100M deal" can be about more than just the money
Are you against the concept of intellectual property as a whole?
As a civil society matter, I think we should agree that making a secret album so that it ends up in the hands of a hedge fund criminal is uncool. It’s appropriate and even good for us to say that while that’s something allowed by the rules, we accord it no honor.
The tech didn’t exist at the time, but honestly wouldn’t it be better for the world if Wu-Tang had issued a single exclusive NFT of the album, and then made the actual music freely available?
I mean maybe not, maybe the songs actually suck, but I would certainly like to hear them.
2. They wanted to sell an album like a piece of physical art. It isn't digital content and there's no digital version of it as far as I know.
Often artists like to make a statement with their art, and how an artwork is received is often as much a part of the statement as the artwork it self (think Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain). Wu-Tang Clan wanted to make a statement with their art and they did, quite successfully to be honest.
Often people incorporate art into their culture, and what the original artist intended with the artwork is only a small part of what it becomes. Society thrives by sharing art and has done so long before copyright existed, quite successfully to be honest.
However as it stands our current economy does mandate that artists make a living for them self, and while we still live in a world of 40 hour per week minimum wage where most people have little energy and time to work on art/hobby in spare time, artists selling their art with artificial scarcity follows logically.
All that being said, this is not what we were talking about with the Wu-Tang Clan record. Their piece was a unique piece that works as a commentary on how the rest of musicians distribute their art. I look at this more like a fine art piece (or even performance art piece) then music. A lot of fine artists incorporate music with their art pieces and nobody expects them to distribute it digitally (though many do). This is kind of like the reverse of that.
Finally, by allowing our artists this freedom of distribution, we get nice things, including a diverse and healthy art world.
It does not mandate that they need to make their living from a particular business model. You already mentioned patronage as a method of funding for art - crowdfunding is one natural extension of that. Performance also does not rely on artifical scarcity. Demand for new art does not rely on artificial scarcity. There is also nothing saying that artists need to make their living from their art - and in fact this is not something most artists can do even with society being burdened with artificial scarcity.
> and while we still live in a world of 40 hour per week minimum wage where most people have little energy and time to work on art/hobby in spare time
I don't think the 40 hour work week is something that should be reinforced in any way at all. If society can have people working full-time on art then there is no real need to keep this outdated model where everyone needs to dedicate a majority of their waking time to survival.
> artists selling their art with artificial scarcity follows logically.
An economy built around articial scarcity reinforces a need for artificial scarcity? Maybe, but not an argument for anything.
> All that being said, this is not what we were talking about with the Wu-Tang Clan record. Their piece was a unique piece that works as a commentary on how the rest of musicians distribute their art. I look at this more like a fine art piece (or even performance art piece) then music. A lot of fine artists incorporate music with their art pieces and nobody expects them to distribute it digitally (though many do). This is kind of like the reverse of that.
I have nothing against an artist only distributing their work to a single person if they want to do that for whatever reason - but I don't think that society should then help them in any way in ensuring that that art stays with only that recipient once it leaves their hands.
> Finally, by allowing our artists this freedom of distribution, we get nice things, including a diverse and healthy art world.
Hahaha no. We get art that is optimized for profitability which tends to work against diversity while almost all transformative creative endeavours are prevented - except when copyright is ignored, as it is with most UGC, game mods mods, youtube videos etc. where it is mostly the platforms profiting off that art and not the artists.
I think that is probably not what Skreli wanted. The entire point seemed to be that no one else would get to hear the music. Otherwise, there's really not much difference between a single person owning the NFT or the gold master with the mp3 being freely distributed.
These funds subscribe to and push a China style system in the USA, as evidenced by their leading role in pushing ESG. There is little good about this abuse of what’s mostly either pension fund money or fed stimulus money.
Blackstone through its Hipnosis subsidiary has spend tons of capital to buy up 50% of Neil Young and much of other music, books and audio book rights
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/cathyolson...
Blackrock, that also destroy single family ownership by buying up homes and is run by the same people, also hold a lot of Spotify stock.
Both the way they get they money they bully with and what they push is therefore anti free market.
In this system anything can be bought by those who control the money supply by inflating all assets, meaning you can't really own any property. So what we have is neither a free market nor capitalism.
That's literally the whole premise of things like copyright and patents. You can't just run out and start distributing NFL streams, copies of movies, or Disney labeled memorabilia without the expressed permission of the people who own that content.
Which are arguably a government-imposed regulatory capture whose disfunction causes the market to be less free. So, it sounds like the two of you kind of agree?
Imagine the destruction that would cause.
1. The private corporation “decided” it wanted to broadcast JRE
2. X happened
3. Private corporation decided it didn’t want to broadcast some JRE episodes
People are interested to in what X is
There’s also a step 0, which is the private corporation predicting it would make a lot of money if it could exclusively broadcast Joe Rogan.
Have people not seen this? I don't understand all the meta conversation about free markets when this is cut and dry 1A violation.
https://news.yahoo.com/white-house-urges-spotify-further-202...
Rather, you believe the action was because the white house said generally that they could do more. Like, that vague statement which didn't even mention episode removal, forced Spotify to do this, not the money.
That hypothesis seems unlikely.
That the company can draw from other potential motivations to justify that action is irrelevant to 1A.
No, they didn't. This is false.
>That the company can draw from other potential motivations to justify that action is irrelevant to 1A.
That you don't personally believe the actual reason they did this to be relevant is itself irrelevant.
There are far more interesting issues at hand and if you pretend this is a discussion about the legalities of this behaviour instead of a question about where idiotic self-harming nonsense like this leads our society you're being deliberately obtuse.
Anyway, I'm not pretending anything; I'm just answering GP's question.
Perhaps they have other principles too, not just the free market as the be-all end-all.
Not to mention that this isn't the free market operating freely -- it's corporations being told what to do by pressure groups (as opposed to customers of those corporations voting with their wallets, e.g. by not listening to Rogan).
I downloaded all my playlists from Spotify and will move to any other streaming service I want to (one which has Neil Young—whom I enjoy).
Who are these “pressure groups?” Are they individual musicians and customers? When do individuals morph into these straw men?
I don't think people left Spotify because of Joe Rogan, not in any real numbers anyway (and we can see that next they publish their user statistics). It's a few pundits and musicians making a negative publicity fuss...
>Who are these “pressure groups?” Are they individual musicians and customers? When do individuals morph into these straw men?
You could have written: "I don't believe there are pressure groups involved, just individual musicians and customers". Instead, you opted to insinuate that I disingenuously created some "straw men" (and thus, am not to be trusted, or whatever). How about the principle of charity, and just making your case, instead on shitting on the person you're discussing with?
There were never just some individuals and musicians, but also major media calling for cancelling the show again and again, group petitions such as:
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/covid-misi...
and even White House statements addressing the JR issue.
Which I think you can argue is a problem (to the original question). Dragging company execs to testify in front of congress about misinformation and then framing any (in)action as monopolistic (during a time of anti-trust inquires) isn't exactly "free market" either. I'm not convinced that influence has fundamentally changed the outcome in the past year but it seems a bit naive to think the government has no influence in these moderation decisions. It's not hard to imagine an example where this would be less defensible; "WH strong disapproves of these 'powerful' tech companies amplifying content that contains misinformation about our justifications to invade Iraq".
That’s pretty different than how you portrayed it.
> It's a few [...] musicians making a negative publicity fuss
One thing I'd like to add on this point is that this kind of negative publicity fuss, raised by musicians, can be incredibly powerful. If you aren't familiar with the work and impact of Neil Young, especially songs like "Southern Man" and "Alabama," I encourage you to consider his work.
His music likely opened some eyes in the 70s while the American South was still gripped in racist fervor (as someone who grew up in the south, I too was impacted by these songs when I encountered them in the early 2000s). Musicians have the power to influence public opinion. That public opinion is influenced by them does not imply that all influence is the result of a greater agenda.
What I find hilarious is the number of folks of a, certain political persuasion (the fact a public health issue is politicized is absolutely nuts), have deemed Neil Young and Joni Mitchell as irrelevant dinosaurs from an artistic perspective. Some even going so far as to say their historical importance is of a mere footnote.
Of course the firestorm their actions caused in the public discourse on this issue has shown their voice matters quite a bit.
Media pundits and organizations can always blow up and enlarge the issues raised by some artists that they agree with to further a cause they'd advocate for anyway.
Doesnt mean the artists are relevant in 2022 pop culture - or that if they had said something different (with no eager pundits to push it) they would been also listened to.
In fact, Neil Young for one, has been laughed at (by the same media) several times in past 1-2 decades, for his "out of touch" tirades against compressed musid, his bizarro Pono music player business, and so on.
Pressure groups can be organic too.
They just aren't just "individuals" -- and their influence is not the same as consumer choice to listen or not to the podcast (and thus relegate it to unprofitable).
When do their actions, in your eyes, cease to be ordinary "vote with your wallet" market interaction?
Doesn't the act organization itself change it from a "vote with your wallet" (as an independent customer) to propagandizing and promoting your ideas to others on what they should buy?
When it comes to companies working like that, people call it a "cartel".
Also, isn't there a difference between movement organized and advocated "don't buy Spotify" versus group dictated Spotify what to sell?
In the second case Spotify caved because of the pressure/threat, not because the product wasn't selling.
It might still be a market decision (in the sense of it being an economic consideration of Spotify's behalf, as the ultimate threat was to their image and ultimately bottom line) but it wasn't a free market decision as in consumers signalling worth of a product with their purchases or lack thereof.
Like, what exactly is it do you think they are coordinating, other than individually choosing to vote with their wallets for similar reasons?
>It might still be a market decision (in the sense of it being an economic consideration of Spotify's behalf, as the ultimate threat was to their image and ultimately bottom line) but it wasn't a free market decision
What you're describing, making business decisions based on weighing the economic costs of losing customers vs. the economic benefits of keeping the content, is indeed a free market decision. The fact that there are no options that make everybody happy doesn't negate that.
I suspect it's due to investors realizing the fragility of Spotify's business model - thanks to some (high profile? ish?) artists abandoning them at the drop of the hat - and selling their stocks, resulting in a huge drop in market value. The company has already been steadily and significantly loosing value for the last year, so it probably didn't take much to convince a lot of investors to bail.
In this case, Spotify is staring down the barrel of a well-organized boycott from both customers and content providers who may (or may not) sign contracts to let Spotify use their music, podcasts, etc.
How is it “voting with your wallet” if you’re still giving them money every month?
Aren’t artists and content creators Spotify customers, too? They use Spotify’s platform to sell and distribute their content. We consider both the buyer and the seller to be customers of eBay. We consider both the app user and the app developer to be customers of Apple. Why do you not also consider the content creators customers “voting with their wallet” in this situation?
It’s really painful to see people draw moral and ethical lines over episodes of a guy bullshitting into a microphone being removed. It’d be nice if your ire and indignation were directed at an issue that would objectively improve the world, like exploitation of children, food inequality and starvation, the actual horrors of tech instead of the ones you’ve attached to, or anything but the plight a millionaire making yet more millions to talk out loud.
The cognitive dissonance is startling.
Much like your original comment, and it doesn’t change that you targeted a political side that you blatantly disagree with. Your statement would be better made without the needless political slant, which as I point out, the other side have done it far more egregiously and in public institutions, such as libraries and schools.
To call this ‘censorship’ I believe is wrong:
1. It’s scientifically proven to be false. Misinformation, be it intended or otherwise brings its own moral and ethical issues.
2. Private companies have the right to choose what they publish/sell on their platform. Preventing them from doing so is also a suppression of free speech.
3. Everyone has a right to an opinion, and to voice that opinion. No-one has an inalienable right to have that opinion published, agreed with or disseminated by any platform they choose.
If anyone has taken choice away, it’s Rogan. Rogan chose to sell exclusivity to his catalog for a very handsome some. Along with that, he chose to forgo certain rights - one being which podcasts Spotify choose to make available.
The free expression of ideas is more important than what you listed here. And see if you can figure out why it is directly related to said issues.
CNN just hired a guy that made book about fake Saddam Hussein and Al-qaeda connection.
CNN and others where saying Irak has WDM. That's proved to be a bold faced lie. Nobody is asking them to be banned in the cancel culture circles.
It's weird that one podcast host can be the root of evil, but selling a WAR with fake lies is nothing.
EDIT: WAR definitely kills people
Look, for example, at the way that the Indian government used to strong-arm Twitter into obedience.
For example, if too many episodes are deleted, he will maybe not at all feel the fulfillment and happiness of doing the job he previously enjoyed. That factor ultimately decides if keeping the contract or breaking it is the better solution in the long run.
Fans of JR want him to be able to publish what he wants, since it's a proxy for having fulfilling job and successful podcast. Getting paid a lot is a forgettable factor - once that money is already safely streaming in :)
What is the issue here? It sounds like you only like half the coin.
Not entirely correct, it is a licensing deal, with exclusivity to Spotify. JR is still the owner of the IP, however, it can only be distributed through Spotify.
But your point still stands, Spotify chooses what they will distribute, which is okay.
My only gripe, in this whole Spotify/Rogan saga, is with the mainstream media that sees Rogan as a threat to their business model so they try to slander him for miss-information, while being greater purveyors of miss-information themselves.
JR is deceptive not because every spoken word he says taken in isolation is false, but because the way he frames and presents various sources leads listeners to draw false conclusions. Taking everything he says at face value is no more valid that taking a joke at face value. TL;DR: - "just asking questions" is deceptive; that's not a valid way to learn nor inform. We could discuss in depth how it's deceptive, but that's not really the point - the point is that not all questions will be interpreted literally, so you need to do the same when judging how reasonable that communication is. You have to look holistically at the message listeners will hear.
That is an understatement.
> JR is deceptive not because everything he says taken in isolation is false
I understand at what you are getting at, words at face value don't mean much, context is everything. However, listening to JR I never get a feeling that I'm being intentionally deceived.
The falsehoods he believes seem to me to be a genuine lack of awareness on his parts, the fact that he changes opinions when confronted with the fact what he said was bullshit gives me trust that he is not out to deceive me.
If he's framing X doctor as best in the field because of Y achievements is because the average Joe would also believe that as well. And the fact that he has corrected some statements made by the past two controversial guests, regarding Covid, is the reason why I trust he's not deceiving with some agenda. Unlike with most mainstream media where I am always trying to figure out the underlying agenda of every statement made from the hosts.
As to an agenda: he has clear monetary and reputational motives for coming up with controversial guests and perspectives. People _like_ acquiring followers, and he's even being paid to do so. There's no need for anything as crude as an outright payment by some snake-oil salesperson to cause a conflict of interest, fame and fortune are quite he incentives by themselves - and here too, people can convince themselves they're onto something (and do so entirely honestly!) when they get this kind of positive feedback - even if it's nonsense.
If you believe that Joe's motives are any more pure than those of mainstream-media hosts, you're wearing rose-tinted glasses. Also, he is a mainstream media host. He's just a deceptive one, that's all. If anything, most mainstream media hosts have _fewer_ incentives to lie; after all, they tend not to simultaneously be media owners nor to rake in quite as much cash as he does, though surely there are exceptions. Also, the mere fact that other media tends to involve a much greater back-office makes it slightly harder to go off the deep end - your colleagues may sometimes say things to burst your (potentially honest) self-deceptive bubble.
TLDR: That a message has context is an inescapable fact of life; but using context to deceive isn't.
2. On a rather related front: what do you think is the key differentiating factor that explains why humans (homo sapiens) have so devastatingly outstripped all ecological competitors?
My personal answer to question 2 explains why I have my doubts about all too rigidly accepting your moral thesis here. I mean, I accept and support the idea that honest debate can help surface tricky truths - and that in that context debate must be free, but not that all speech should be promoted unconditionally. That's harmful, and the only reason we're even talking about that is because as a society we've come to see the first amendment not merely as a tool to constrain an overly powerful, potentially abusive government, but as an axiom of patriotic identity. The first amendment is not perfect, and even if it were, it should not be applied blindly to every situation, nor should it replace all other social norms about honesty and truth.
But even if your perspective differs - I don't expect everyone to follow my lead, of couse - I don't think you're going to understand my reasoning without at least trying to understand and answer that question. In essence - your assertion that it's (implicitly unconditionally) "very healthy to have an enquiring mind" is backed by an assumption I do not share. I know that there are conditions here, and Rogan isn't satisfying those. And the heart of that disagreement is behind question 2.
Also, you don't think that having an enquiring mind is good? How do you justify that? And what is the assumption I made that you don't share?
TL;DR: People enjoy Joe Rogan because he's having simple conversations without pretending to have all the answers. Meanwhile the entire MSM, from Rachel Maddow to James Clapper has deliberately lied to their audience to push for wars and escalations. If you want to start cancelling, start there.
There is something deeply wrong with destroying things that haven't yet reached their natural end or not letting them grow, even if one is legally entitled to.
What I don't understand is how this idea comes up every time something like this is discussed. I'm assuming that this does not receive convincing counter-arguments which is why I will attempt to do so here.
Almost everyone who believes in free markets (except maybe a very few libertarian anarchists) belives in regulation of the markets to restrict bad actors or unintended harmful side effects to the market or the people in general.
Being a proponent of free markets does not mean that you support the idea that market participants can break the laws for the sake of the markets. It also does not mean that one believes the existing laws and regulations are correct and sufficient. Everyone understands that it is an organic process where companies will test the regulations and regulatory bodies have to monitor and act on it constantly.
Some of it requires affected people discussing it and making the regulators and market participants know about the bad effects they feel so that something can be done about it, in one way or another.
I can imagine there being regulations forcing these content hosting platforms to not be able to take down content unless it is explicitly breaking the law as long as they are being compensated for it with no price discrimination. Similar regulations already apply to a lot of businesses.
I believe it's because there has not been a consistently applied general principle of free markets articulated, which the removal of episodes here violates.
Also, you are making wild assumptions about the contract between Joe Rogan and Spotify. Maybe there's a clause in there that they will not only license his shows, but also make them available to their users? In that case, removing the episodes would be a breach of contract.
I hope you understand a little better now.
How is this unethical?
The principle of “don’t interfere with the free exchange of ideas” is one such example where it is particularly hard to see the justification. The consequences of speech suppression are usually subtle —- how do you quantify the impact of a conversation that didn't happen? And at the same time, the consequences of allowing hatespeech or misinformation are usually not subtle, but rather immediate and relatively obvious.
I think we’re actually lucky because the Joe Rohan example does contain examples of good justifications. For the past two years, Rogan was openly discussing politically inconvenient inconsistencies, contradictions, and in some cases retroactively apparent lies by the establishment. It is good to know when your leaders are incompetent, when they are lying, or even when they have made a mistake and never taken responsibility for it! It is good that these conversations happened and good that people know this information.
But even if we can see that this is good, it’s still one of those abstract good-for-society things that is hard to quantify and hard to weigh against the consequences of its counterfactual non-existence. It is thus almost impossible to balance against the harms of, for example, supporting vaccine skepticism. But that’s not an argument for suppression, merely an acknowledgement that this is hard to think about clearly.
But it is a fallacy to say: Joe Rogan’s vaccine skepticism is getting people killed, therefor he should be silenced. The reason is that living in the sort of society that would silence Joe Rogan also gets people killed. The deaths are just abstract deaths.
Put it this way: image we get into a war in five years because Rogan and all the other independent voices like him have been successfully soft-pressured into not talking about the downsides, while the mainstream propaganda mouthpieces have been selling the war hard. Thus, we create a concrete terrible outcome because we allowed a culture of speech suppression. Unfortunately, even if that does happen, it will not be obvious that speech suppression led to war, because, again, general principles tend to have more subtle but far-reaching consequences.
There are also well-known edge cases where speech suppression is probably obviously the right thing to do. I personally think that the genome for smallpox should never have been published, because try as I might, I can’t imagine a scenario where the harms of suppressing the specific knowledge outweighs the possible (even likely) consequence of its dispersement. You can have a principle while being cognizant that tradeoffs can be valid.
Again, though, the reason why free expression is weirdly difficult to defend, is that the harms of “bad” free expression are usually immediate and clear, while the harms of speech suppression are abstract and distant.
> The deaths are just abstract deaths.
False. At least 5.7 million actual people have died from Covid. Probably many more. Your counter is abstract and somewhat straw man, while the pandemic is a fairly specific and real public health crisis that more or less all public health experts agree requires active management.
Though now that I think on it, there was suppression of anti-Iraq-war speech in the early 2000s. Maybe if those perspectives had been more widely heard, that war wouldn’t have happened.
In any case, what you do in your last paragraph is merely an example of the thing I’m talking about. Misunderstanding someone’s argument and calling that misunderstanding a strawman is itself a strawman. 5.7 million deaths on one side of the ledger, okay. Well, the establishment was wrong about masking early in the pandemic, so how many more lives would have been lost if pro-masking voices had been suppressed then?
You seemed to defend and frame Rogan’s speech as if it was part of a beneficial citizenry probing corrupt government officials, and it seems like you downplayed the potential harm of spreading vaccine misinformation as being balanced out by the abstract harm of censorship.
To put it succinctly, you think I’m minimizing the harm of vaccine misinformation, and I suspect you’re minimizing the probable harms of normalizing speech suppression, and maybe we’re both somewhat right about the other.
No it's not, because free speech does not equal the right to be heard.
> I find it unethical to suppress someone's ability to freely voice their opinions
Can you really not come up with a single example of when you feel a group, entity, corporation, whatever has any right to remove a person from their platform or premise because of what they are saying? Really? This is "unethical", categorically?
Which hey, I get. But they are refusing to publish it because they don’t want to be associated with it anymore, and they bought exclusive rights to it from producer, so…
And I don’t see Joe Rogan saying he is in a hurry to return the money Spotify gave him for this exclusive licensing deal either.
The only real way I can think to ‘solve’ that problem would be to make it illegal to do exclusive licensing deals for content.
Which I personally would be behind (it is also at the root of the whole streaming provider wars, among many many others), but has very far reaching consequences intellectual property wise.
Intellectual property law has always had an element of ‘society gives you these protections with the idea and understanding that it makes EVERYONE wealthier in the long run’. There is no NATURAL RIGHT (as in, something that will happen unless interfered with) to exclusive anything related to knowledge.
If anything, it requires extraordinary work and legal protections for it to be even a potential thing, and that is becoming more and more the case.
To get that protection from Society (without it just being a naked theft from everyone anyway), there should be some exchange or actual improvement for the rest of society.
Saying that at a minimum if you have exclusive rights to sell or distribute something, you must be selling or distributing it at a rate that allows normal people to access it (there is the tough part - how do you define that!) or you lose exclusivity and anyone can distribute copies for free - seems perfectly fair.
It also encourages archiving and retention of our history, which would be a good sell for overall society I imagine.
- this basically means no one has any IP right to stop information being distributed at all. So if someone say writes a book, then is later embarrassed by it, they couldn’t stop people from publishing it. They currently can.
- this means highly valuable IP (source code to your secret search engine backend?) is very difficult to control. It would also probably apply to things like manufacturing howtos, blueprints, etc.
- Even if you say ‘distributed’ means publicly viewed, this probably impacts distributed/licensed software in various ways, and some of these others. If someone is able to open it in a hex editor that is certainly going to count as ‘viewable’. If they can do that without signing an NDA (which would probably be impacted by this too?), or going through a gate and doing it at your secure facility, that probably counts as ‘public’ too.
- so then there is no way to stop someone else from distributing your now deprecated software? Potentially for a fee?
They probably did the calculus and determined they’d lose LESS people if they scrubbed the catalog than if they didn’t. It’s not a political statement to them.
I dont understand how you can come to that conclusion. eg A doctor saving the life of a white supremacist.
Ethics are differentiated by profession. It is not altigether clear, which ethical considerations Spotify is bound by and apply to this situation.
I do not. That assertion is unrelated to the topic, so Im not sure why you imagined it.
To be clear, I have implied the consequences are equal or, worse, probably multiplicative...in the context of the theoretical consideration you posited.
> It's unethical to publish content that promotes white supremacists
Again, how does this relate to any ethics that applies to Spotify?
So at this point what matters is that Spotify made a deal with Joe Rogan, and thus Spotify is also responsible for whatever he fancies to broadcast.
As the only way to vote in this matter is my wallet, I considered cancelling the subscription. If I did I would also try to convince other people to do the same.
And frankly, Spotify was a better service without podcasts.
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/michelle-shock...
I'm not here to defend Joe Rogan, I just think it's stupid to get drawn into Internet fights between celebrities. Most of it is kayfabe anyway.
I’m welcome to say Spotify shouldn’t “censor” (in the corporate media sense) certain speakers.
And I can cancel/encourage others to cancel their Spotify subscriptions.
And I can keep on using Spotify, but let them know I don’t like their conduct, even though it doesn’t (YET!) make me unsubscribe.
All free market.
The end result is that a content distribution platform will have to curate a specific brand that targets specific consumers and only distributes conforming content. Whereas we currently have a half dozen or so music streaming services that all have roughly the same content, we’ll soon find content fragmented across 20 different platforms; each corresponding to a specific slice of consumer preferences. Many of us will have to subscribe to multiple services to get the content we seek and will not be able to mix content. E.g., many of my current playlists on Spotify would be split across several disjoint streaming platforms.
Instead, I think platforms should never be reactive in calls for dropping content. Instead they should have a general principle of broadly distributing all but the most extreme fringe content. They can regularly update their principles used in determining what content they distribute, but that should never be done as a quick reaction to some mob. Otherwise they’ll constantly be facing a series of outraged customers that want the platform to stop distributing some content that those outraged user’s don’t even consume. And I believe that will only result in platform fragmentation as distributors curate a brand around specific segments of consumers.
For example, if Spotify stops paying Joe Rogan, they are unlikely to remain exclusive. Another example is that they may not have rights to remove episodes, or refuse to air episodes without loosing exclusivity or paying a penalty.
My point is that we don't know what the other terms are of the contract are.
> Whereas we currently have a half dozen or so music streaming services that all have roughly the same content, we’ll soon find content fragmented across 20 different platforms; each corresponding to a specific slice of consumer preferences. Many of us will have to subscribe to multiple services to get the content we seek and will not be able to mix content. E.g., many of my current playlists on Spotify would be split across several disjoint streaming platforms.
Where else can you get Joe Rogan's podcast, today?
Nowhere. That's fragmentation. Spotify literally signed the contract explicitly for this reason. So it doesn't make sense to start worrying about different content being available on different platforms now that people are removing their music in protest, rather than two years ago when they made his podcast exclusive in the first place.
Sure things are fragmented today, but that doesn't mean it cant be much worse. Today, most of the big catalogs have a ton of overlap. Exclusivity isn't the norm. If artists and services start drawing up into political camps, this overlap could significantly decrease.
Historically the press has dealt with this problem by taking a “lowest common denominator” approach to morality. Extreme prudishness.
For example, the infamous Hayes Code was intended to help movie producers deal with the fact that almost every American city had (different!) laws on what a movie could show.
That’s not ideal, or even an option.
Example - A news station refusing to publish stories that involves their parent or a sibling company is a common one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_censorship Religious censorship is another well understood form.
If you're saying "political censorship" is the only form of censorship that matters - it's debatable in the same way flat earth arguments are debatable.
This does involve the government though. They literally called on Spotify to censor Rogan.
I think this is a simple example of the people with wallets using said wallets to indicate what they will and won't tolerate.
"White House press secretary Jen Psaki called on music and podcast streaming giant Spotify to do “more” in the fight against Covid-19 misinformation on Tuesday.
At her daily press briefing, President Joe Biden’s top spokeswoman was asked about a decision by the company to add disclaimers linking to Covid-19 information hubs to any piece of content that includes discussion of the pandemic, vaccines, or Covid-19 itself. She responded that the change was a good step, but that the company could take steps (if it wanted) to actively prohibit content that contained misinformation that experts have warned is prolonging the pandemic and leading to more deaths."
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
Now, if I can't say "cucumber" at all, in any context, whether I entered in any agreement or not - thats censorship.
Now, we get the worst of both worlds, where Spotify funds the production of harmful propaganda (by their own published standards), and also starts censoring independently produced content.
Case closed.
My criteria don't matter, and Spotify's criteria have no bearing on the statement I made.
https://newsroom.spotify.com/2022-01-30/spotify-platform-rul...
Do you have a better pejorative adjective to describe Rogan's content?
The long-standing tradition has been war. The long-standing tradition has been war even among those that made the same choice but think that means something slightly different.
Platforms are contracted by their users, they are not simply homeowners with private property. Too many companies these days get away with code and content changes without proper accountability, and things are regularly hidden to cover tracks... It's making the Internet very toxic now, and the blanket statements don't apply any more, people should always be held accountable for what they do and say in the course of making money at all levels, that's the only real thing protecting us from becoming slaves to corporate interests.
You can but it needs to be handled through the free market. One shouldn't be asking any government to step in and make some person or company do something.
In reality there is political risk for highly public decisions. Politicians do have power. They can call you before Congress under oath without any evidence of legal wrongdoing by anyone. They can start costly antitrust investigations. They can start costly audits. Anywhere along the way, if you make the slightest misstep (or even if you don't), they accuse you of perjury or lying to a federal official or obstruction of justice. Or maybe they just don't "protect" you as well as they might from various unfortunate events.
Moreover, there's a pattern of governments harnessing the power of private companies to various purposes through this kind of coercion. If you are a CEO with a comfortable life do you really want to test the ideal that it can't happen in the U.S.?
I just don’t want to support it.
So I moved to Apple Music.
Not this dispute, per se, but I do advocate for a legislative solution to this whole situation: break them up. Recently posted to HN: https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/mergers-ruin-everything
You don't understand why someone would want to have all episodes of their favourite podcast available in one place? Just because someone supports the free market doesn't mean they don't have preferences. Support of the free market just means that one wants buyers and sellers to be able to transact without coercion, it doesn't imply any specific opinion about the practices of a company.
I don't like bad products and don't want companies to do stuff like this. I don't particularly care about Joe Rogan, but I've had a hell of a time finding episodes of various TV shows that have had episodes removed (Community, South Park, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia) from services, and eventually I just end up pirating that episode.
I don't think what Spotify's doing should be illegal but that doesn't mean I have to like it or that I can't say they're making their product worse.
If you are referring to people who want Spotify to be forced to do things by law, like keep episodes up (which would be bizarre), then I'm against that too.
I understand that perfectly well. I don't understand why Spotify would be obligated to serve that need, or indeed serve any content they own that they do not want to serve.
Then again supporting free market leads to many other unethical things than censorship. Like slavery, why shouldn't you be able to sell some person or yourself to slavery? That is entirely in accord of free markets.
People support the free market because they like freedom. People conspiring to deplatform legal content cuts against that freedom. And they see arguments like this one as rhetorical tricks to get them to disarm and be colonized.
This is just the GPL vs. BSD wars all over again, with people claiming that freedom only means BSD-style and not worrying about the freedom-preserving aspects of the GPL and that if you're pro-GPL you're anti-freedom.
As a proponent of Net Neutrality, I recognize that there are instances where corporations should not have the last say in any matter.
A free market with unbounded rights for corporations is not a good idea.
Since when did the term net neutrality change from meaning "a free and open internet on equal terms" to "expropriating platforms that refuse to show things I want to see"?
If you are trying to make the distinction that "censorship" is a term with a specific definition that applies to government censorship, I don't think people really disagree with that either, they're just using the phrase loosely because nobody's provided a better concept to apply. Call it corpo-sensorship, or corpoship, or whatever, but until there's a better word people will just keep using the more digestible one in a lazy way.
This is a larger cultural question and will determine where we go from here.
Are we still a society that values free expression and open debate?
We have these media trolls just spewing provocative nonsense, finding any open wound in our discourse and throw salt on it so they can have their lols, dollars, and influence. How can you be surprise when free speech is finding it's boundaries.
This is not even a partisan thing, I do believe exploitative media that feeds on strife is very good business and thus it finds its audience, whether it's left or right. Catering to the different psychologies and fears while maximizing profits.
Left-wing market anarchists (e.g. the C4SS) would respond that anything involving "intellectual property" is an inherently unfree market that unjustly upholds monopolies on artificially scarce immaterial goods through the threat of state violence.
I don't know if this is your opinion or not, but in general, this argument might hold more water if "activists" weren't gleefully trying to shut down relatively free-speech sites like Gab and Parler and others.
You can't have it both ways and claim that business can allow whatever content they want and then try and shut down businesses who do just that.
It's very clear where the bias lies. I am worried.
Not everyone who supports free markets is a market fundamentalist. It is not hard to understand that people may support free markets for most goods but oppose them for healthcare, education, senate seats and slaves. Do you really have a hard time understanding that?
>Exactly what he sold (NDA, limitations on his speech in his free time etc.) we'll probably never know, but whoever calls this "censorship" needs a reality check.
Censorship is the suppression of information. You may consider it good, you may consider it bad; it may be done by public institutions, it may be done by private institutions. NDAs are literally a form of censorship. I am not sure what you even mean by censorship if you think that isn't censorship.
But there is a cultural question that I think this defense sidesteps a bit. I'd frame it as a question.
What level of heterodox opinion would you encourage Spotify (and the like) to tolerate? What opinion would be heterodox to you or your peers that you'd want to see Spotify to defend as the realm of reasonable on a platform of broad interest to the general public?
Draw the line where people spread lies or harass others so that actual harm gets done in the real world. Alex Jones got deplatformed after some of his fans were threatening grieving Sand Hooks families. Joe Rogans episodes were removed after they spread misinformation that convinces people to not get vaccinated in the middle of a pandemic, which will probably cause some deaths given how many people listen to his content.
Consider in the summer of 2020 there was a popular social movement that had quite a presence on social media that was spreading incorrect and ultimately very harmful statistics about police violence.
Arguably, this led to wide spread riots, large scale property destruction in multiple cities and ultimately an increase in crime. I think if a vocal minority bullied large corporations to effectively deplatform those social justice organizations then I think many people would be playing a different tune.
I agree with you that in reality there would be bigger backlash if this was applied to the left than the right.
Do some research first.
I believe the core issue here is: while the first amendment applies to government, it is something that businesses should try to make a core part of their ethos. The censorship that tech companies have been doing are really against free speech and freedom of association.
Yes, companies are within their legal right to do the censorship we are seeing. That doesn't mean it's right.
Take a look at what happened with Parler. It was a rare successful challenger, although small by comparison, to big social media. Then AOC pressured a few companies to ban Parler and they all complied - whether to build favor with legislators that might regulate them or because it aligned with their politics. The claim that people can just build their own platform doesn’t work in a market this distorted.
As for your redefinition of censorship - I disagree. Legal or contractual allowance doesn’t change what it is. This is censorship.
It might not be quite as wrong or bad as, say, state-sponsored blanket censorship, but I think we should call it what it is.
A work was available and now it's not. The only reason being that an entity decided that it should be removed from view. Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information[0].
Here, information has been suppressed, thus, censored.
Now anyone who receives an offer like this from Spotify will have to consider the possibility of having their brand censored. This will either drive up the cost to Spotify or simply make content providers refuse all together. So, unless Spotify has decided to quit this business plan, I don’t think this is a good long-term solution.
I do think what happened is Spotify saw its DAUs and subscribers dipping, and after the bloodbath in $FB stock last week, got freaked out and abandoned a long-term business plan to prevent a dip in users this quarter.
Uh, plainly you do. The commenter's main point was that what the broadcaster did was not censorship (and whoever calls it that "need a reality check"). You're saying it "still is in my book". What much more different can the two of you be on this issue?
Part of the reason for the disconnect here probably lies in the fact that the definition given in the WP is overly broad and vague. The way the term is usually used, it strongly suggests some outside party, typically an authoritative body like a government, intervening to say "you cannot publish this". Basically, there needs to be some element of outside coercion for the term "censorship", or even "self-censorship" to apply.
And no -- the weight of public opinion does not constitute "coercion" in this context.
That's why when a company wakes up and realizes "gee, it turns out publishing endless amounts inflammatory crap that does not contribute to discourse and with essentially no artistic value is actually not so good for our overall image and business model" -- that's not what the term "censorship" was is really meant for.
I just think we need to be able to say hey, this is censorship, and it's not necessarily wrong because of XYZ reasons and it's fine and above-board. Spotify's got the rights to the show and nobody can or should be able to compel them to broadcast something they don't want to.
However, pointing to a nebulous category of "proper censorship" (which sounds like pretty much exactly the same thing, just perpetrated by a state actor instead of a private corp) as a way to invalidate the use of the word "censorship" in this context seems dishonest. Not to mention that it strikes me as odd to refer to some instances of censorship as "proper" compared to others.
Let's go along with the "proper censorship" narrative and put on the tinfoil hat for a moment. It would be easy for a sufficiently motivated state actor to create or compel a private company to acquire the rights to works that they want censored, and then simply use the private entity as a front to carry out the censorship on the government's behalf.
I'm not implying that's happening here, but we need to recognize that mostly anything is possible.
If I'm entirely unable to access a work today that was freely available yesterday, it has been censored. The devil's in the details, but the semantics and results here are very clear.
I would argue: "No - either the supermarket, or Coca-Cola decided it wasn't selling very well."
In case you're too young to remember New Coke -- and how its sudden removal was so traumatic for an entire generation:
I hate to say this is a strawman because claiming logical fallacy is overused in Internet discourse, but that's what your comment feels like. Along with some ageism sprinkled in as an afterthought.
Of course censorship is not applicable to a physical product. I have only referred to the censorship of "speech, public communication, or other information."
Sorry, I don't get where you are going with this at all.
"If your local 7-Eleven had Oui and Hustler on its racks last week, but they are gone this week, it has been censored."
I would argue: "No - 7-Eleven either decided just those titles weren't selling all at that well. On top of generating negative press, and driving away families with children."
There was an uproar. What is ironic, one of the party's postulates (visible on their website as a standalone slogan) was that they want to change the law so that businesses can refuse service to any person or group for any reason.
And well, Facebook exercised this law. :)
Very very few people are consistent in their views about privacy, freedom, or property rights. Politics is mostly a football game and the refs are only right when they call it in favor of your team.
But I do think there is an issue where companies that are monopolies control large parts of public discourse.
I would prefer the right to be able to participate in public discourse without being tied to particular companies. For example, interoperability protocols for messaging and social networking.
Then people have the power to engage with who they like and companies can no longer control the flow of information in the same way. In the earlier days of the internet this is what it was like, before Facebook and Twitter monopolised and controlled information flow.
Do you believe governments should force private companies to serve people they don’t want to? If so, then you understand how civil rights work. It’s not enough to ensure the government respects our rights, the government must also ensure that private companies respect our rights. Free speech has become a civil rights issue.
I don't believe political viewpoints fall into that category, but I'm willing to hear any good arguments that they should be.
If you don’t believe that political viewpoints should be a protected category then you are condoning private entities pressuring the public into certain political viewpoints. If I cannot use Spotify unless I agree with their politics then that will strongly influence me to agree with their politics to the extent that their product has utility in my life, which may be to a significant degree. This may be in a situation where my politics wouldn’t ordinarily align with Spotify’s if I were left to my own critical thinking.
I believe we should generally limit the amount of influence private companies have on the political viewpoints of the population. Especially when these private companies can be very powerful corporations controlled by a relatively small amount of people. Especially in a democracy.
I think we need to limit their power by ensuring that no company can have such a monopoly, and I'd like to see greater choice and interoperability. Break up the network effect that gives them this control.
I don't think making political viewpoints a protected characteristic is a good way to achieve that, and would cause as many problems as it would solve.
By this logic, civil rights for race, etc. was not a good way to solve the discrimination issue. The real solution would have been to break up large companies since if there are no large companies then different races and sexes could just open up their own businesses to serve their own communities without the need to force other small business owners to serve people they do not want to serve.
But that is obviously not the problem civil rights aim to solve. Allowing companies to discriminate by any identity characteristic promotes the Balkanization of society which is something we do not want. Democrat and republican enclaves are just as fractious to the nation as white and black enclaves.
What problems would civil rights for political orientation cause that civil rights for race, sex, etc. do not cause?
I agree balkanisation is a big issue. We actually have that anyway with large service providers hosting everything, e.g. filter bubbles, AI driven news feeds, etc. Balkanisation in information flow can be mitigated by requiring interoperability protocols, to prevent lock-in to particular service providers.
I want to remove the ability of large companies to be able to monitor and manipulate information flow in society. Not just for political viewpoints, but for everything. So I guess I have wider goals than this specific issue.
To your question on what problems would be caused by civil rights for political viewpoints that don't apply to the others, I would return to the fact that other protected characteristics are essentially innate to a person and aren't a matter of choice, and are relatively easy to define. Pretty much anything anyone says can be viewed as a political statement, or it can be argued as such. You would have to carve out a large number of exceptions and argue them all on a case by case basis, and by law in many cases. Is hate speech permitted? Incitement to violence? Spreading dangerous mis-information? Who assesses whether a statement is a political statement or an exception that is not protected?
I don't see the above as any kind of rebuttal of your position. I'm still thinking about your arguments, it's just what I have right now. Not sure how much longer we can go in this thread, but thanks for giving me an interesting and thought provoking debate!
To address this question, there is at least 200 years of US common law available to evaluate whether or not something should be protected under the first amendment. I’m simply suggesting that we protect the same rights to speech in the private sphere that we already do in the public sphere, at the very least for companies whose main line of business is serving as a platform for the speech of others that would otherwise be generally open to the public. In the age of privately owned and centralized online media platforms and marketplaces, extending civil rights to free speech seems logical.
> thanks for giving me an interesting and thought provoking debate!
Thank you too
Instead, I think many of us are arguing that Spotify shouldn’t exercise that option just because of an outraged online mob. That includes those of us that aren’t particular fans of Rogan and wouldn’t be affected if we couldn’t consume his content anymore. Many of us are arguing that as a general principal; don’t give in to a short-lived and irrational angry mob.
I am arguing for Spotify and other content distributors to ignore angry mobs because I worry that eventually such a mob will come for something I do value. E.g., I listen to plenty of music that includes gratuitous levels of profanity. I imagine that such music greatly offends many people, chiefly culturally conservative prudes. Should such an online mob form and demand Spotify stop distributing some of my favorite music then I hope Spotify resists that mob.
Maybe one day I’ll even be a member of such a mob demanding that some platform stop distributing something that offends my sensibilities. While my emotions of hate and outrage may cloud my rational judgment, I hope the platform will have the courage to tell me and my compatriots to pound sand. If we don’t like the content, then we don’t have to consume it.
*Edited to fix a mistake as pointed out in a reply.
I'm sure Spotify are under colossal pressure to delete historical perceived heretical 'content' on their platform in order to keep their paying customers calm during an unprecedented era of US anti free A1 speech and hysterical media driven witch hunts.
I also think their long term prospects, as societal fashions change and (I hope) reason prevails, will not be good as they will be associated with a very dark period in history. IBM survived this after WWII but it took a lot of PR and having the media on their side.
Agree that hopefully Spotify can resist calls to stop distributing content that other users find objectionable. As you point out, fashion will change and hopefully it does so in a way that shuns calls for censorship.
The difference in me (chiefly culturally conservative prude) and the liberal cancel culture is that I won’t try to silence someone’s choices based on my values. You may listen to whatever you want and I hope you get enjoyment out of it. I support your freedoms and a lot of good men have died to protect them.
Nice try though pretending history starts at some arbitrary line you can then use to critique. Conservatives are just getting a taste of their own medicine.
Their American fanbase (yanno, the MASSIVE group of people that enabled the Dixie Chicks' success... it sure didn't come from European audiences) turned on them because their values were obviously different and I guess Natalie Maines couldn't grasp that.
I don't have any evidence, but I'm leaning towards thinking that the people calling for Joe Rogan's cancellation aren't his main fanbase. That's the common thread with today's "social liberal" influence on media- people that are complete non-consumers of whatever winds up in the crosshairs just go to fucking war nowadays against whatever they've decided is offensive.
American main stream news distribute fake new very often, but I don't see much uproar about that in the cancel culture circles.
https://rumble.com/vtunof-the-media-outlets-demanding-joe-ro...
Glenn Greenwald made a good video about. Breaking Points, Kyle Kulinski and Tim Pool has talked about this issue. CNN, MSNBC, etc. can say outright lies and nobody wants them to be cancelled. Instead they are being promoted on Youtube. Does "Horse dewormer" ring a bell or "Russia gate"? Both of them are lies period.
Why on earth does this matter in any way?
> shit on their president
Uh, this is what they said:
> Just so you know, we're on the good side with y'all. We do not want this war, this violence, and we're ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas.
Not exactly “shitting” on him is it?
Anecdotally, I think joe Rogan has lost a TON of fans over the last few years. There is no better example of this than the joe rogan subreddit. It used to be a place for fans to gather, but now he regularly gets roasted and fairly criticized. And if you’ve actually watched the JRE over the last few years, his podcast has changed SIGNIFICANTLY (for the worse imo). There’s no better example of this than the clip from 2020 that was circulating this week, where he basically calls antivaxxers bozos.
He used to have a kooky, interesting perspective and I appreciated how he would approach topics with an open mind. Even if I didn’t agree with his guests, he’d ask decent questions and confront the egregious shit. He doesn’t do that anymore. His guests are just people that believe the same fringe, unsupported contrarian conspiracies.
This is a great analogy.
There isn't? Are there not people calling for someone to be fired/resign because of some action they did?
Nobody’s calling the shots here… nobody went and decided “aim the twitter outrage cannon at Joe Rogan, he ran afoul of the Cancel Culture and must atone.” It’s just a phenomenon that happens due to the tendency of humans on social media to amplify outrage rather than ignore it.
The idea that nobody organizes to push around political muscle seems pretty naive, like suggesting that there are no guerilla ads on reddit.
It extends far beyond social media.
(Also this is only tangentially related but why is being prude a bad thing? I had a female friend in high school that would get insulted for being too prude. I don't think people really realize the way these concepts get applied in reality. People are allowed to be prude just as they're allowed to be libertines.)
Rupert Murdoch, on the other hand, has a history of running news at a loss to push his angle.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/jun/11/rupert-murdoch...
That's not my claim. I'm claiming that if you actually watch CNN, they tend to literally put a camera to a big computer monitor and show you a bunch of people's tweets. I'm not talking about bias/etc here, I'm talking about how they literally feature tweets as part of their news coverage.
Of the typical stories on CNN that one would qualify as "cancel culture", they typically go something like: "<Celebrity A> said a controversial thing on Twitter! Let's take a look at some of the reactions..." etc etc. Their coverage seems to be focused on "what do the people think of X", all the damned time. Yes, this makes CNN quite useless as a news organization.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/20/style/starbucks-gay-agend...
I wish people would have the integrity to speak about the situation honestly.
Discussions with conservatives on issues like this inevitably result in every topic being badly grafted and transposed into a discussion on "left-wing culture". The issue-at-hand is rarely, if ever, the point. Reading conservative commentary on this issue, one would believe that he was banned from Spotify for stating that he believed that small government was preferable to big government. It's completely and utterly fucking disingenuous.
None of the removed episodes were about COVID. Actually, only 1 removed episode is from the last 3 years.
It appears that they were deleted instead due to his use of racial slurs. Which, I guess, is a "gotcha".
With your regards to your second point, I do not know what you are referencing. This goes back to my earlier point. Are you saying that it's outrageous that Spotify would remove podcasts containing racial slurs? Or have you pushed aside the topic-at-hand to discuss some social issue outside of this topic?
Now,
- venture into messing with kids
- screwing with public health
- racism
and ... what were you going to stand on? the serious respect you plowed being the "in guy" for the last 15 mins of fame talking BS? Nobody cares that much. I don't. You're in decline now or out. There's a built in and pre-understood fungibility to the whole business, which puts a smile on my face.
Whether it's Trump, the I-man, or Howard stern a lot of media people like them b/c the bring in viewers. And they are the first to toss them out when the line is crossed. I think Imus (I-man) of "Imus in the morning" learned that in a direct way. So let's not totally dismiss the platform behind the host even if Spotify is OK here.
The use of language in culture wars are fascinating, I really wish I studied deeply enough in the humanities to really grok it. To my laymen eyes, there are a lot of evolving shibboleths[1], and verbal (or mental) gymnastics to variably identify an activity subjectively based on where on the political spectrum the perpetrator (or poor victim). People are really insist the other side is completely unreasonable, and is to blame for engaging in the culture war.
1. e.g. cancel culture, BIPoC, woke-ism, gender pronouns, virtue-signaling, &tc
If the government openly pressures Spotify, that is government censorship, which is literally what just happened.
Second:
Because there isn’t a good alternative for distribution.
There really isn’t.
Because the press employs less people nationwide than any time since … who knows, before the 1950s.
We need good information. We need uncensored information and this includes misinformation. We need to hear opinions and points of view including contrarian, controversial, and fringe ones.
I got an something important out of that Alex Jones returns episode. No one else I know thought it had any value, but for whatever reason I saw value in it.
What is the uncensored alternative? Truly.
If cloudflare can shut down whoever they want, if social media shuts down whoever they want, what is the real solution?
If we don’t have an answer, we don’t have free speech, so talking about Spotify being a private company is true but it can’t be viewed in isolation.
This is absolutely false on both counts.
First: at no point did the government pressure spotify to specifically take down content.
Second: answering a question asked to you about what you think about a current event would not constitute censorship anyways.
This is not something Spotify woke up one day and decided to do of their own volition, with their own free market defined property. There was much more to it than that.
The White House(!) was calling for this type of censorship! Do you think that might be relevant to the discussion?
Being a proponent of free markets doesn't prevent me from criticizing how that freedom is exercised.
> What Spotify chooses to do with it is completely up to them, even if they bought it with the express intention of "burning" it all, i.e. never broadcasting it, that would still not be censorship
It is censorship by any reasonable definition. It's just not illegal censorship.
But : the negotiation would have run very very different if they would have said :we buy it, but will never use or publish it!
He might have still sold (for a higher price) or rejected the offer.
You can't change the "purpose" of a contract after it was made.
In german, we have a law, yes a law, basically saying : in treu und glauben (in good faith / in trust and believe) it basically prevents contractors to write contracts which fuck over signers.
It is super rarely used for misuse of contract law / information of the signer, but sometimes it is. This is probably one of those cases.
In good faith, that Spotify will publish his work, he signed the contract.
I see this same argument constantly, in nearly every discussion about a company doing anything bad. It's a meaningless point. Do you people posting things like this really not understand the distinction between right and legal? Or do you think moral considerations are beneath discussion?
It's amazing how people don't get cognitive dissonance over this disingenuous song and dance. The people lauding the choice of private companies to operate as they please when they deplatform are the very people pressuring private companies to deplatform people they don't like in the first place. If you were genuinely in favor of private companies operating as they see fit, you wouldn't feel motivated to pressure them to drop content you don't like.
>What Spotify chooses to do with it is completely up to them
What we don't like is that is it not left "up to them" what to do with their content. The point of the free market is that individuals are left to act independently in their own interests. This ideal is undermined when groups create pressure to deplatform or pull content.
First of all, WHO ARE YOU ARGUING WITH?!? - "proponent of a free market"? Who are you talking to? Critics of these reactions are not these people, so why on earth are you pretending you want to have a discussion when you deliberately choose to argue with people that have no objection to them? You're talking to an audience of three people, yet everybody that's on your side, the side of censorship will pretend you're refuting the opposing perspective. No, you just picked a tiny group that already agrees with you, pretend it doesn't, and then explain why they actually agree with you.
Ok, so it seems like you're fine with it, because Spotify is a "private corporation", aren't you? Is Spotify free to ban all black artists then? They are a private company after all. Or is that different for reason x / y / z. Fine, let's be a little more theoretical than. Youtube, Spotify and Twitter decide to ban ALL opinions that go against invading Venezuala. Is that something you will support? Private company banning an opinion which they disagree with, all fine and dandy, correct?
Top comment, most upvotes and everyone joins in on this farce... wtf is going on here?
- Discriminating artists across the board based on ethnicity
- Social networks banning end-users for having an opinion
Neither of these are in any way similar to selling your intellectual property to a third party and them deciding whether or not to air it. If you additionally enter an NDA with this party, voluntarily and through compensation, that is in no way anything like discrimination based on ethnicity, or blanket censorship on social media.
Why are you pretending this is a difficult issue to understand, it very clearly isn't. You're making up random assertions that fit your own predetermined perspective. Everybody that makes money on Youtube or Twitter or Spotify agreed to certain terms. And these terms say they can be deplatformed. So yes, the artist getting displaced based on ethnicity and the anti-war opinion getting banned is exactly the same thing. And it seems you think this is justifiable as long as a spread sheet says it's profitable to do so.
I'm not opening a discussion here, there is nothing to discuss. I'm simply following your own logic to it's conclusion. Your input is not necessary in any of this.
Maybe it would be different if you said "as a supporter of the free market, I believe that Spotify was correct and in their rights to do this".
Does that include Monsanto poisoning the ground? Blackwater lobbying for war in the third world?
That's an especially rich take considering the controversy is over actions a company is taking specifically to address other peoples' complaints.
The issue is not _that_ the episodes were deleted.
The issue is that social pressure resulted in removal of information from (what is considered by most as) the "public realm". This information comes in the form of "open" (seeming) discussion with people who hold various views. This type of debate and discussion should be encouraged by our society.
This stands in stark contrast with the profit motivator that drives those who govern these "public realm"-ish services. This is not a matter of the free market being free, but more that our society is becoming greatly dependent on services that are intrinsically business driven. Those services being seen as the "open forum" that they are not needs to be fixed.
Before the Spotify deal, you would just see couple of Joe Rogan clips on YouTube and you have sat through maybe 3-4 entire podcasts. You don't care much about MMA or you don't think comedians are that important/hypeworthy as the JRE fandom would claim.
After the Spotify deal you just slowly stopped even seeing the clips because for some reason you just don't care to search for them and YouTube stopped recommending new clips.
You would hear about some hot takes about Joe Rogan vs something but you just don't find it worthwhile to investigate or frankly having an opinion about them.
He’s open to many criticisms, but dismissing his potential to have valid opinions because he was a TV presenter doesn’t seem like a strong argument. Especially if one is unwilling to listen to at least a few of his shows. I, myself, listened regularly 10 years ago (it was fun and funny) but can’t really stomach him anymore. I do check-in and listen to whole shows though. Clips almost never do his actual positions justice.
Also, we’re told to consult our doctors, etc. His controversial guests had PhDs. So, credentials alone don’t necessarily qualify people.. and that’s in either direction: having them (PhD credentialed guests), or not having them (Joe).
Punching at him for his job(s) is a weak attack.
And the time commitment. I have a friend who's a big fan and kept pushing me to listen, but I just plain don't have the time to listen to a meandering 3 hour podcast, even if I was interested.
> So how deeply informed by experts do you gauge that you are if the majority of what you read or hear is short-form?
Huh? You're jumping to conclusions and, frankly, saying foolish things. In addition to just plain being wrong, there's literally no way you could validly infer anything about "the majority of what [I] read or hear" from what I wrote.
Do you believe that you learn more by hearing/watching, or reading less?
You seemed to say you don't have time for long-form content? Did I misunderstand what you originally said?
That's not what I said, and you did misunderstand. What I did say is that I didn't have time for a "meandering 3 hour podcast," specifically referring to Rogan's.
Joe Rogan's meandering 3 hour podcast is clearly not the universe of "long-form content."
For example, Jordan Peterson is very sharp and articulate on certain topics - but then I notice on certain topics where he hasn't had 15-20+ years of deep analysis/study on, his less polished views show, and is where he gets most of his flak, say on Bitcoin or climate change I personally find value in seeing this broad, meandering view of someone - it in part helps me understanding him as a role model better, likewise observing the growth/personal evolution process further.
What kind of 3-hour long content do you tolerate and that you don't consider to be meandering? Do you have a few examples you could share?
Of course, but there's nearly 8 billion people in the world, so you have to make choices.
He's like Oprah in her peak: He's disarming, humble, and has a knack for getting even the stiffest guests to open up. And some of the most fascinating guests are people you've never heard of.
He's extremely physically fit, does massive amounts of cardio, and does backcountry hunting trips with only a backpack.
There is nothing more church ladyish than commenting on a subject based purely on secondhand knowledge.
It doesn't have to be a 1 to 1 comparison but there's plenty of people out there that would say along one or more dimensions that Oprah is no better, better, or the same as Rogan.
The host is a broken record increasingly with an agenda who flies an "I'm a moron" disclaimer in the same breath as speaking authoritatively on whatever controversial fire he wishes to give more oxygen to.
At least nowadays most the interesting guests go on other podcasts when they're making the rounds, so JRE's unique value has greatly diminished.
This is the same trick Jon Stewart used on The Daily Show to great effect. “I’m just a comedian” indeed. People just happened to like his takes.
When I listen to Joe it's different, I'm not saying he couldn't run with the bit of "I don't know nuthin' about nuthin'" and come from a place of empathy and curiosity which would be cool. But what it is in practice is "I'm a moron and you shouldn't listen to what I think I don't know what I'm talking about buttttt and then speaks authoritatively on some politically charged topic he's supposedly ignorant of."
Worked at Mcdonalds.. not worth listening to, took a job as a cleaner out of school... don't waste my time. Only people with prestigious employment histories are worth the time of day.
I find the controversy about JRE to be massively overhyped like the controversy over Howard Stern back in the day.
If you want a deep dive on Alex Jones and all his lies and schemes, the podcast Knowledge Fight has been documenting InfoWars for years.
Is this true? Do you have any analysis to back this up, or is it just something you made up because it makes you feel good?
0: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/jul/02/usa.internatio...
I don't much care for his style, but I think one day, maybe long after his death, people will give Jones the respect he deserves as an artist. A well-flowing rant is not an easy thing to improvise, and he is just a machine for generating them. To paraphrase a quote about jazz, you don't just wake up one morning, pick up a microphone and start raving about the new world order.
There is a real art to conspiracy theorizing. You can't just make things up. You have to take random true things and stitch them together into sort of framework that's wild and entertaining enough for your audience while still seeming plausible. You have to shade them in with sinister undertones. It's a sort of dark impressionism.
He is his own brand of genius.
People who suffer delusions often aren't stupid or even unconvincing. A lot of that intellectual effort you're describing, piecing together plausible details to justify their falsehood, can go into it. Someone I know who suffers these issues had a reputation in the family for being creative, a good storyteller... The hospitalizations and psychiatric diagnoses came later.
That's like, a big part of why all primates, fucking, communicate?
I don't really care about JRE all that much, but I know there are people out there that resonate with his line of 'thinking'.
It's a common pattern in America. Got a whole Presidency out of it.
... two, actually. Maybe even three, depending on who's writing the biography.
1. He stated that Japan began using ivermectin as first line treatment for COVID and it stopped their wave. This is easily discredited by visiting the official site for approved treatments and seeing that ivermectin is not on there (https://www.pmda.go.jp/english/about-pmda/0002.html).
2. He also made a claim this was a planned pandemic and points to table-top exercises by NIH and CDC two years prior to the pandemic that spoke about a coronavirus emerging from China and resulting in lockdowns. Is it really evidence? SARS.... a coronavirus emerged from China in 2003 and resulted in lockdowns in China. So was the CDC "planning" the pandemic or just working through previous experience. Additionally, I'm sure they've run exercises on vector borne viruses spreading into the US given climate change and the spread of various mosquito species into the Southern US (think Zika). I'm sure they run a ton of exercises, 99% of which don't come true... but one ends up happening and all of sudden that's proof this was all planned?
Two things that are easily explainable or discredited, but the average Joe isn't going to realize this. This whole "just asking questions" argument isn't great because it's not a debate, no one is fact checking these guests. Joe doesn't put up any creditable responses or rebuttals.
I’m not for censorship; just pointing out this is clearly not true.
Thousands of died (and continue too) when they could have just been vaccinated.
Basically, I don’t think people (including myself) sit around and carefully consider the evidence or think critically about their own beliefs. For the most part, we digest what we hear and that’s that.
https://mobile.twitter.com/Snowden/status/148718316166680576...
I mean it’s a massive risk having people in society who actually have lots of followers, they can say anything!!
We need to control influencers!
/s
His podcast went from "(self-proclaimed) stupid man talks with people and gets them to explain stuff" to "(self-proclaimed) stupid man talks with people and gets them to explain stuff EXCEPT when it's about COVID he's suddenly 'done the research', usually invited 'guest experts' are anti-vaxxers AND when he invites real experts, he argues with them on irrelevant technicalities".
His guest, who has the correct info, claims that children have a much higher risk from getting myocarditis from COVID than getting it from the vaccine.
Rogan says "I don't think that's true, no no no, I don't think that's true. Let's look that up"
They look it up, Rogan is definitely in the wrong. The risk is 8x higher from COVID than the vaccine.
Does Rogan admit he's wrong? No, he states:
- "Well, that's not what I read before." - "And anyway, where are we reading these things?" and then rambles nonsense.
This is a pretty transparent way of signaling to his audience that even in the face of actual data, you should just find some justification to believe the stupid conspiracy-level thing you want to keep believing.
https://twitter.com/FullContactMTWF/status/14816386894154629...
Everyone complaining about Rogan's conversations is making the argument that they are harmful, but not a single one of these complaints is accompanied by any actual evidence of harm. Do you have any such evidence?
And in any case, it doesn't have any bearing on the fact that Rogan claims to be some kind of innocent, open-minded guy who wants to talk to all kinds of people, when in fact he has clearly chosen a side on most issues and treats guests differenly in order to push people to that side.
Which is all besides the point. If you think they are grifters and conspiracy theorists, you are free to simply not listen to the podcast. The real question here is whether anyone else should be able to listen to it, or whether it should be censored due to actual harm. I asked if you have actual evidence of such harm, and this is the only question that needs an answer.
To @p49k, you are a BSer. Joe Rogan apologized on twitter and even linked to The Guardian article where he got the "misinformation" regarding myocarditis. Here' a retweet by the guy that corrected him in the episode: https://twitter.com/joshzepps/status/1481834278271225864
> To people who think that @joerogan is closed-minded or that he’d get pissed when I disagree with him, here’s Exhibit A. I love the guy
You mean instances like this [1] where Rogan openly admits he's wrong? Even though, it turns out later, he wasn't totally wrong after all [2], and there's still some unexplored nuance that isn't captured by reductive soundbites?
Everything you've said reveals that you haven't actually watched Rogan's podcasts. "Arguing on irrelevant technicalities" is called "learning". All models are wrong, but some are useful, and questioning the boundaries of models so you understand their scope is important.
[1] https://twitter.com/joerogan/status/1481836566427414529
[2] https://twitter.com/VPrasadMDMPH/status/1481993190718771201
> The damage is already done.
What damage exactly? Point it out and be specific please.
Considering that most podcasts I listen to release weekly or even less often, that's pretty good.
It sounds like you barely have any idea of what Stern's controversy was about.
It sounds like you barely have any idea of what Stern's controversy was about.
The gall.
On top of the lists, each user can block annoying things they dislike easily. Just right click the recommended videos section and automatically add it as a uBlock Origin rule.
* his addiction was caused by the increase in his prescribed dosage (so he could cope with his wife's cancer diagnosis and treatment - which was initially considered terminal by her doctors) * he had to look for alternative treatments after his wife's cancer treatment has started working and he tried to cut back on his dosage, unsuccessfully (he tried to go practically cold turkey by his own admission, which made it worse, you can criticize him for not handling it properly) * to my knowledge, he's still doing the all meat diet to this day, along with his daughter (since it keeps her symptom free after years of severe autoimmune disease)
The addon does the equivalent of scrub forward in the video, which... I don't think creators (and therefore the sponsors paying them) have any way of seeing that some segment of their video is being skipped. Everybody is happy!
I just don't need to see yet another outdated 2 minute segment for N*rdV*N or K*wi Co.
I don't care about Joe Rogan enough to deal with Spotify.
Rogan was a proactive person conducting open research into the world around him. When proactive people investigate things and share their findings, it now only takes a few to dislike the findings, fuss, and have the findings removed.
To those that support this, I have 4 questions:
1. Is disincentivising sharing knowledge really good for the world?
2. Is it reasonable to expect 100% of inquiries be 100% accurate on the very first attempt?
3. Is it efficient for society to repeat the same research many times since previous investigations are scrubbed from public record?
4. Is it healthy for public discourse to be made less diverse and only concern 'safe' topics?
1. Lots of correct scientific ideas were considered outright heretical (not just merely fringe), prior to mainstream acceptance. If you exclude 'fringe' ideas, you exclude the bad ones and the good ones.
2. People who get duped will simply stop listening. Example: This week I was duped by a youtuber, and will never rely on that source again [1].
I'd say we can even call for it to no longer be published. And if it can be shown to actively cause significant harm the legal system can respond.
To refute sloppy analysis, the sloppy analysis must be published and available.
Science follows the scientific method. Pseudoscience, definitionally, is anything that identifies as science but does not follow the scientific method. A study is not needed to demonstrate that not following the scientific method lessens the usage of the scientific method. No one would bother peer reviewing or publishing trivial work. It is a waste of time.
Again, you're treating this as a given when it is anything but. Sure, pseudoscience means you're not doing science, but people promoting pseudoscience weren't necessarily going to being doing science instead / the people listening to them wouldn't necessarily be listening to science instead. In other words, science and pseudoscience are not a zero-sum game. In fact, the existence / publication of pseudoscience could actually galvanize "real" scientists to do more work than they otherwise would've to prove things scientifically. Not saying this is the case, but again, your assertion is far from a given.
Also, although we like to pretend that "science" is some concrete ideal, it is really not. For example, I mainly consider things to be scientific in line with Karl Popper's thinking re: falsifiability, which would cause me to lump a lot of "science" done today in the "not super sciency" category alongside some of the more clearly bunk pseudoscience.
If it's so widely debunked then why do you care? Should be easy to shoot down on a debate. Oh and you don't have to listen.
I don't think I'd put this situation in the same bucket as cancel culture. The spread of Covid misinformation, especially anti-vaccination stuff, has a provable impact on the healthcare system which forces our governments to ask us to endure more restrictions than would be necessary if vaccine hesitancy wasn't a thing.
People like Rogan are sitting there complaining about government overreach while exacerbating the problem by spreading misinformation. As the distributor I think Spotify has an obligation to put a stop to it. I'm not saying he should be cancelled, but they need to tell him to get back to entertaining and to leave the medical advice to the experts in that field.
It's exactly this kind of misinformation that leads to people calling for censorship. You honestly think if there was MORE censorship there would be LESS vaccine hesitancy and the government would be implementing LESS mandates? That's dillusional and you have no evidence of it.
Censorship has a provable impact on people's trust. If you censor competing viewpoints then guess what? I'm less likely to believe yours. The only way I believe anything is if competing viewpoints are allowed. If they aren't then I don't believe you can defend your viewpoint. I don't just blindly trust anybody. You have to show evidence and prove yourself.
Come back to me when Nature censors something for ideological reasons.
Someone better tell Bill Nye and Niel.
That may have been my own fault - I don't remember enough to know.
Just saying.
I would be genuinely surprised to find this hasn't already happened.
>Fauci is not going to pay the bills.
Is that why Disney just released a feature film documentary about him? Complete with red carpet gala and a monster Disney+ promotion?
Sure, get the brightest minds that are contrarian on the program. Malone and Peterson aren't it. Get Richard Ebright on the program.
I wouldn't call the guests on his show "fringe". In fact blanket calling all the hundreds if not thousands of people he had on his podcast fringe would require whomever said that to be someone who thinks through a groupthink/xenophobic mentality of believing the other side is evil.
In one of this podcasts, JR said he was trying to find someone from the "other side" to debate (I think it was) Dr Malone. He said he couldn't, everyone turned him down. I think this part of the big disconnect in modern discourse; one side wants open discussion and debate, the other wants to censor and deplatform.
Their actions speak for themselves.
For myself, they don't need to say anything else.
Their ideas were so shocking they weren't only banned, but were made pariahs of, thrown into asylums, and burned.
The best we can do is hear different ideas with an open mind, and use our logic and discernment to come to our own judgements.
Since the quality of judgement differs greatly from person to person, it's dangerous to allow your flow of information to be filtered by corporate or governmental pressures; let alone by any single segment of society.
Though all that said, I'm against deplatforming him.
At worst he stands to gain less money out of his show. It’s the business risk he took with being risqué, and as any risk, he may take a fall.
People like him because he appears to genuinely mean that.
It is clear that if arguments like how often he said "cunt" or "nigger" on air get tossed into the debate of censoring his podcasts on covid-related matters, the pitchfork brigade is just out to get him. Not much coherency here.
He has a 3 hour conversation with a guest where he talks at lengths about pretty much anything he wants to ask them about.
That isn't a shock jock!
Or, for the last two years, Covid and only Covid.
And anyone who disagrees with him, including the world's leading experts are stupid.
Then he has Alex Jones on to say provocative things to boost his audience.
But yes, we will call this open research, and not being a shock jock somehow...?
Like every other TV show, news papers, radio program because it has been a persistent feature of our lives for almost 2 years now. How is this a criticism?
> And anyone who disagrees with him, including the world's leading experts are stupid.
I doubt he said this. I've seen clips where he has questioned orthodoxy surrounding things like mask mandates and vaccine mandates and the effectiveness therein. But I doubt he called people straight out of stupid because they disagree with him.
> Then he has Alex Jones on to say provocative things to boost his audience.
And? Are you saying he should get boring people on his show? That he shouldn't have popular people on there?
Alex Jones was made notorious because of his removal from many social media platforms.
Many people find Alex Jones entertaining. That doesn't mean they agree with his views. I find Alex Jones entertaining but I think many of his views are ridiculous.
> But yes, we will call this open research, and not being a shock jock somehow..
I didn't say it was open research. I was disputing the fact he is a shock jock. A shock jock goes out of their way to be controversial. Think Howard Stern in the 90s. Joe Rogan isn't isn't that.
The controversy around Joe Rogan is drummed up by his competition (tradition news and media) to ironically get views (the thing you were complaining about by him having Alex Jones on the show).
It's the biggest story in the world right now and if affecting everyone. You expect him to have a 3 hour conversation and not talk about covid once? And despite what your echo chambers tell you he doesn't only talk about covid.
like jim gaffigan, adam curry, carrot top, beeple, steven pinker, ron white, snoop dog, gilbert gottfried, chuck palahniuk... i mean, i could go on and on.
it's like people don't even look at his guests.
I'm guessing not. Most of these people calling to censor him have never listened to a second of his show besides the sound bites the corporate media (who see him as competition even though he's never claimed to be a journalist) has played. Or they are articles out headlines. You can tell someone who's never watched him because they claim he's a right winger when really he's further left than they are.
Howard Stern is a shock jock, and a crass one too.
So much of this outrage seems to be coming from people who don’t watch Rogan and simply base their opinions on second-hand information.
This theme stretches beyond Joe Rogan
If someone's decided to be upset over Rogan, there’s not much he can, or should, do about it. The content is not shocking, it’s the intolerant overreaction that shocks the wannabe censors.
The content - offensive/inaccurate or not - doesn't matter if the host knows their show causes outrage and chooses to lean into it.
Edit: He's different from other shock jocks, though, in that he's been smart enough to do this in a way that straddles the line - he doesn't look like a Limbaugh or a Stern and can say that he's "just doing research" and "only asking questions", while still intentionally profiting from outrage.
Had he had a show no one cares about, he wouldn’t get as listeners and as many advertisers.
But there’s another side to promoting such speech, which is taking responsibility for it when it makes some people and advertisers reject him.
Spotify and Rogan try to only take the upside without the downside.
That's quite a shocking low effort attack that means absolutely nothing. Why should anyone believe your claims.
I could care less about losing internet points - but you should look at yourself in the mirror and see what it represents about who you are.
What this thread cries about it Rogan and Spotify trying to minimize the downside of risk they have just suffered - what gives you bigger gain can also cause you bigger losses (and not that big here tbh)
Joe Rogan Experience in particular is just him and some other dude/dudette talking for 3 hours straight.
I have never seen media more unscripted than these podcasts, except maybe live sports, but even those have egregious commercial breaks. Given how unscripted and extemporaneous his 3+ hour interviews are, I highly doubt he even has time to make them scripted, contrived and "editorialize(d) for creating controversy". What is he supposed to do prepare 3 hours for every 3 hours of podcasting he does, editorialize that 3 hours, and by the way he has another job as a comedian, so after that would he prepare for his comedy routine, and then by the time the runs his show and hangs out, he wakes up before he has any chance to sleep because he does like 3 of these interviews every week?
There is no editorialization, and if there were it would have to be extremely minimal. Trust me, just watch a few of them, entire episodes that is. Its just two people talking for 3 hours straight, maybe on drugs, maybe a little high, maybe just completely hammered, or completely sober. Its just two people talking, and he puts it up online so others can enjoy it as well, and you're trying to convince yourself he does it for a motive. You can do the exact same thing too, just talk with someone you find interesting for a few hours and put it up online, no need to be mad that he has a big audience.
Joe Rogan is an entertainer. He is not a researcher, and the JRE is not a forum for scientific discussion. Mistaking entertainment for science is a strong sign that you need to deepen your engagement with scientific material outside of the audiovisual entertainment medium.
It's just Rogan knowing that he can peddle the line and bring in both the skeptics and the opposition and pretend that he is just promoting an open discussion. Or he is just ignorant, but I think the dude is smart enough to know that controversy drives up impressions and increases ad revenue and ultimately the success and dollars from his brand.
What kind of research does he do? I've never seen more than the odd clip, but I was under the impression he's just like all other entertainers that interview guests and engage in fairly shallow conversation about various topics.
A lot of people I know would tell you they didn't feel really competent in their (professional) field until they were working for 5 years which happens to align with the magic 10k hours cited as being the requirement to become an expert. Even if Rogan spends a whole year researching a topic that's still only 1/5th of what I'd consider the point where someone's qualified enough to speak publicly on a subject.
When I don't know something about a topic I default to trusting the people who've worked in the field for their entire life.
Here's a great example from tech that I think aligns well with a lot of the controversy we've seen over the last few years...
Years ago there used to be this huge debate about ZFS and a lack of ECC RAM combining to cause a "scrub of death" that would obliterate your data. The idea started on the TrueNAS (FreeNAS) forums [1]. That debate raged for ages and is a perfect example of how uninformed people shouting very loudly can have an outsized impact on public discourse. You don't have to take my word for it either. Here's a forum thread [2] where `ahrens` [3], the co-creator of ZFS, says the "scrub of death" isn't a thing and that non-ECC RAM with ZFS gives you better guarantees than a lot of other filesystems will with non-ECC RAM.
His response is followed by people telling him he's wrong and continuing the debate.
I have a couple questions for you if you're willing to answer. Would you believe the creator of that thread in the TrueNAS forum or the creator of ZFS when they're giving you conflicting information? If you would believe the creator of ZFS in the above scenario, why do you think some people trust celebrities like Rogan over a medical expert like Fauci or, literally, the creators of vaccines?
1. https://www.truenas.com/community/threads/ecc-vs-non-ecc-ram...
2. https://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1235679&p=...
You seem to be somewhat misinformed. It's not what Joe Rogan says that is under fire, it's what his guests say. Rogan mostly says stuff like "wow" and lets his guests speak.
To make things even more interesting, this latest drama is because he had Robert Malone [1] as a guest on his show. Malone is not just a doctor, but he is also a scientist responsible for the early work on making mRNA vaccines possible. That's what's extra crazy about all of this. It's not even some random comedian talking out of his comfort zone. The guest is one of the most informed people about mRNA in the world. The guy literally made his career on mRNA. Yet what he says does not align with the most widely propagated take, so he must be silenced.
I personally don't know enough about mRNA to have a say, but what I can safely assume is that Malone knows more about mRNA than most people who are saying he is wrong.
--
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_W._Malone
PS. Another great HN comment about this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30219457
Malone received criticism for propagating COVID-19 misinformation, including making claims about the toxicity of spike proteins generated by some COVID-19 vaccines;[4][19][6][31] using interviews on mass media to popularize medication with ivermectin;[32] and tweeting a study by others questioning vaccine safety that was later retracted.[4] He said that LinkedIn temporarily suspended his account over a post stating that the Chairman of the Thomson Reuters Foundation was also a board member at Pfizer, and other posts questioning the efficacy of some COVID-19 vaccines.[33][34] Malone has also falsely claimed that the Pfizer–BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines could worsen COVID-19 infections,[1] and that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had not granted full approval to the Pfizer vaccine in August 2021.[35] In November 2021, Malone shared a deceptive video on Twitter that falsely linked athlete deaths to COVID-19 vaccines. In particular, the video suggested that Jake West, a 17-year-old Indiana high school football player who died of sudden cardiac arrest, had died from COVID-19 vaccination. However, West died in 2013 from an undiagnosed heart condition. Malone deleted the video from his Twitter account after receiving a cease-and-desist letter from West's family. Malone later said on Twitter that he did not know the video was doctored.[36] On December 29, 2021, Twitter permanently suspended Malone from its platform, citing "repeated violations of our COVID-19 misinformation policy",[37][38] after he shared on that platform a video about supposed harmful effects of the Pfizer vaccine.[39][40]
On December 30, 2021, Malone claimed on the The Joe Rogan Experience podcast that something called "mass formation psychosis" was developing in American society in its reaction to COVID-19 just as during the rise of Nazi Germany.[41][42] The term mass formation psychosis isn't found in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, is not based on factual medical information, and is described by Steve Reicher, a professor of social psychology at the University of St Andrews, as "more metaphor than science, more ideology than fact."[43] Clips of the podcast episode were removed by YouTube from their platform for violating the site's Community Guidelines.[42] 270 physicians, scientists, academics, nurses and students wrote an open letter to Spotify complaining about the content of the podcast.[44][45] On January 3, 2022, Congressman Troy Nehls entered a full transcript[2][46] of The Joe Rogan Experience interview with Malone into the Congressional Record in order to circumvent what he said was censorship by social media.[2][47]
On January 23, 2022, Malone spoke at an anti-vaccine and anti-vaccine mandate rally in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.[36][48]
Why can you safely assume that? Further, I'm less concerned about what 'most people' are saying about Malone, but more interested in what his equally credentialled peers are saying, which is that he's full of shit.
Based on his achievements. His achievements are extremely rare. Even most MDs (medical doctors) don't have groundbreaking research to their name, doubly so on specifically the topic they're discussing.
> more interested in what his equally credentialled peers are saying, which is that he's full of shit.
That interests me the most too. Unfortunately all the coverage I've seen thus far doesn't have any takes by equally credentialled peers - that is peers who have spent decades researching mRNA. Most coverage doesn't even have takes by MDs, nevermind equally credentialled.
But the distinguishing feature of great scientific figures who challenged the establishment and overturned accepted wisdom is that they were actually right. Semmelweis was right about hand washing. Galileo and Copernicus were right about heliocentrism. So is Malone right that athletes are dropping dead in droves from vaccination? That vaccines might actually make COVID-19 infections worse? That vaccine safety research is false and that the spike protein is highly toxic? Do you personally believe these things?
More than anything, this is what I generally promote - focus on the actual claims. I personally try really hard to ignore someone's character and address their core points instead. I think this is generally a good principle. Although it can be exhausting on random non-HN internet discussion boards, where nuanced replies and principle of charity are drowned by zero effort parroting.
That is unfortunately a common theme with most reporting I've seen of this drama. The stories contain vague statements like "misinformation about covid" but no actual claims are pointed out and then refuted. It's like these outlets are so afraid of this misinformation that they think even mentioning these claims would be harmful. The less charitable interpretation would of course be that most outlet reporters haven't even watched the podcast.
> there is an exclusive focus on individual personalities, appeals to authority and storytelling
This is a strategy heavily promoted by pro-vax tribes. Don't listen to random influencers, listen to doctors. It's also something that has been used heavily against Joe Rogan. Criticism that he has non-experts on the show talking outside of their expertise. Now when Joe Rogan got an actual MD on his show, whose life work has extreme relevance to covid - well the appeal to authority story has suddenly vanished. Most coverage of this drama doesn't list Malone's achievements at all, probably because then they couldn't get away with just handwaving away what he says. Most stories focus on Joe Rogan personally, as if he's the one making the statements.
> So is Malone right [? ...] Do you personally believe these things?
He's probably right about some things like corners being cut against protocol with the Pfizer approval. He's probably wrong about vaccines making infections worse. However I don't really have strong opinions on the points Malone is making. I'm participating in this discussion because of the bigger picture.
What I take issue with is the manufactured and/or sloppy coverage of this. Malone's achievements shouldn't be pushed under the rug. His expertise shouldn't be hidden. If he has gone crazy in old age, so be it. However that case should then be made in strength. Instead the narrative is that Joe Rogan spreads misinformation and Malone is just another garden variety conspiracy nut.
Is it? Because your reply is again filled with pathos, tribalism and narrativization.
The Malone controversy really has little to do with heroes, villains and victims. It's a very straightforward matter: he used his profile to share wildly unscientific claims, hoax videos and delusional "mass formation psychosis" theories to the public. Because this contributes to an existing public health crisis it has invited scrutiny of his person and of platforms that host his content. Cause and effect. Simple stuff.
I refute these.
Where is the pathos? There certainly wasn't any intent of emotional appeal, I never do that. Would be good to know which part of my comment triggered an emotional response.
What tribalism? Mentioning that HN has better commentators or mentioning that pro-vax tribes exist? Please do let me know, what part of my comment constitutes tribalism.
As for narrativization, well this is a HN comment not an Excel sheet. All comments here are narratives, including yours. So not sure what to make of that. Seems like a red herring.
Rogan is providing his guests with a massive platform that can be used to disseminate information, so I think he has a responsibility to make sure his guests aren't spreading misinformation. Imagine if a popular influencer with a young fanbase had a guest on that swore eating Tide Pods was good for your health. Would you think a simple "wow" would be enough to absolve that influencer of responsibility for the message being disseminated?
> I personally don't know enough about mRNA to have a say, but what I can safely assume is that Malone knows more about mRNA than most people who are saying he is wrong.
From what I can find he contributed one building block 30 years ago. There's been 3 decades of research and development involving hundreds or thousands of people since then. Was he involved in the space at all in the last 2 decades prior to Covid? I tried to find if he kept up with the field, but search results are saturated with the latest controversy.
The best I could do for myself to understand his claims was a fact check website that references the sources that Malone was citing on Rogan's podcast [1]. The thing that really jumps out at me is that he's willing to use preprint sources that haven't been peer reviewed, so they haven't undergone any scrutiny or survived any criticism. Some of the authors of the sources even say he's misinterpreting or misrepresenting the results.
Malone:
> “[T]here is signs in some data […] from Denmark, among other places of negative efficacy against Omicron as a function of the number of vaccinations up to three”
vs:
> The first author of the preprint, medical statistician and epidemiologist Christian Holm Hansen, explained to Health Feedback that the claim misrepresented their results. He said that this effect often arises due to biases, which “are quite common in VE estimation from observational studies based on population data.” These biases include potential differences in detection, testing, or behavior between vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals.
So am I supposed to believe Malone or the author of the paper that Malone is citing? One of them is actively working on the topic as their day job / career and the other is touring around doing talk shows like a celebrity. Do you think Malone knows more about a paper written by Christian Holm Hansen than Christian Holm Hansen does?
Malone isn't doing any original research from what I could find, so if the author of work he's citing refutes him, I think that's adequate to call it misinformation or misrepresentation. And I think that harsh label is warranted because he never comes back around to correct the record. If Malone was concerned about his long term credibility and corrected himself then I would call it a misunderstanding.
I've seen Malone giving information compared to Fauci giving information and that's not a reasonable comparison IMO. At best Malone is a small cog in a big machine while Fauci is the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Malone is presenting an individual opinion while Fauci is presenting a consensus opinion that's expected to be the aggregate of the entire industry.
Also, Rogan calling Malone "the inventor of mRNA" is a bit of an embellishment. That's like having Tim Paterson on a podcast and calling him "the inventor of MS Azure" because he wrote DOS 30 years prior.
I'll finish by saying I think the politicization is terrible for us long term. In Canada we have some provinces with strict lockdown measures and some with none. The ones with strict measures are collecting detailed stats to substantiate their viewpoint and some of the provinces without are planning to de-emphasize stat collection.
That's a big loss for everyone because we're going to miss out on an opportunity to analyze the effectiveness of strict social restrictions vs none. The problem is that it's a political death sentence for the anti-lockdown choice if the data says they were wrong, so the solution is to hide the truth even if it could end up supporting that position.
We're also at risk of losing out on the highest value health related incident post-mortem in the history of mankind because the politicization will prevent everyone involved from being honest and upfront about things that worked, things that didn't work, mistakes that were made, improvements that could be made in the future, etc..
So, in the context of politicizing the topic, I think entertainers like Rogan are doing a quite a bit of harm.
1. https://healthfeedback.org/claimreview/robert-malone-mislead...
The motivation behind those actions aren't a desperate attempts to seek truth in a chaotic environment, but people with trying to dominate others.
The only thing Apple Music has going for it over Spotify (in my opinion) is that the recommendations are easily 10x better for discovering new content.
Shocked and how poor apple did here considering I haven’t had issues with any other product from them.
You must not have tried Apple Home.
Thank you! I spent the last few years working on improving the quality of those recommendations!
People are working on almost everything, so I don’t feel like I’m giving away anything shocking. Apple is a big place, though. My experience may not be the same as others.
The recommendation system alone is what keeps me looking past all the errors with the software being unable to play a song on demand on a regular basis.
Congrats again!
I play my son music using my phone. Spotify bury the "Private Session" toggle deep in the settings, and arbitrarily turn it off again after a while. If this damages Spotify's recommendations, then it's entirely their doing.
What is youpinoon in way Music.app is so clunky still? For example when perusing music, if you click on something there is no way to go back to what you were just looking at!
It's such a cool thing to get to work on, and be paid for, and something I imagine everyone working on actually uses. This is not true of a lot of software we all write. So I don't understand why the app is so bad in 100 tiny little ways
I wasn't really involved in the client, so I probably don't have much insight to share in that regard.
It was really special to what I had been working on in a keynote or read articles/comments specifically addressing a feature, but it isn't always gravy. So many news reports/articles/comments are just so far off from what is really happening going on. And many comments are tough to hear, but true as well. Still overall it was a positive and threads like this are really something special. It means a lot to have our work appreciated and think that can be missing from the modern software development experience.
But yeah, aside from that, it's kind of a miserable experience. Hard to believe it's _still_ so bad.
But yea, Apple Music is not great here either. Haven't had enough time with their suggestion engine, but Spotify's is indeed pretty awful.
Tidal https://tidal.com/
Deezer https://www.deezer.com/
Bandcamp https://bandcamp.com/
Jango https://www.jango.com/
Radio Paradise https://radioparadise.com/
There's also FOSS software for collaborative music with friends, musicians etc:
That unlimited lenght "Flow" playlist. It's like personalized radio, but you can skip songs.
I'm so sad that Spotify didn't implement such a feature yet.
- the variant of music that I used
- Google+
- search (well they silently replaced it with a non working version)
They are becoming more and more irrelevant for me.
That's why I forget Google Play Music.
So the second that the podcast side started to interfere with the music side in the slightest, I dipped.
But when I hear that they are paying $100M to some controversial US podcaster (before Neil Young left Spotify I have never heard of Joe Rogan), I'm thinking, this isn't what I signed up for. I want my money to go towards German indie bands, not rich American celebrities.
I don't know what the majority of Spotify listeners care about, but for my part I know I couldn't care less about podcasts, I just want to listen to music.
With Spotify allowing commercial interests to influence recommendations (artists can choose to take a drop in royalty income to prioritize their music in recommendations) and pushing podcasts in my face all the time when I open the app, to the detriment of recommendations... I've decided to run my own Jellyfin server instead.
Like you, this isn't what I signed up for. It's sad that I can't just pay a monthly fee for a good music app -- even Apple Music, Tidal, Deezer, etc. are all crappy music apps.
No. Censorship is the suppression of speech.
If you don't sell a book because you don't think it fits your store, or you don't think it's profitable, that's not censorship.
But if you refuse to carry a book SPECIFICALLY because you don't like the message, then that IS censorship.
Some forms of censorship are illegal, and some forms are legally required. But that doesn't mean that it's not censorship just because you agree with that's being censored.
In this case, sure, "censorship" is literally the suppression of speech but it's a much bigger idea than that. It's this huge institutional power dynamic. And so if you want to define it as something smaller where say white people getting in trouble for saying the n word is censorship then that's fine but then the word loses all the impact because if that's what you consider censorship then almost everyone is going to be in favor of it to some degree. It's not this inherently evil dystopian thing anymore. But then rhetorically you rely that fact that impact is "sticky" so when you say "well this thing I don't like is censorship oOoOoOooO and my line of reasoning supports that" you're kind of betting that the reader doesn't take notice that in the universe you've constructed censorship is pretty benign.
If that is the point where you begin to care, then it's probably much too late.
Then they redefined censorship to be only if the government does it. Thats having your cake and eating it too.
If you consider that censorship, then you’ve gone a long way toward convincing me that your definition of censorship is an OK thing to do.
No, it most certainly is censorship. It is also business. Those two things aren't mutually exclusive. I'd also note that it is completely legal, but that I (personally) think that such practices are harmful.
> shout at the manager of a shoe store for not selling books?
A shoe store? That's not a good analogy. I wouldn't complain that Spotify doesn't offer downloads of popular software, would I?
Would people complain if Barnes & Noble suddenly pulled a number of "controversial" books from their shelves after public outcry?
When a government tells a company to act, there is always an implicit "or else". That is defacto censorship.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
I mention this because arguably, allowing covid to proliferate means thousands of deaths, long COVID syndrome, and potential for new mutations to arise. These misinformed hucksters are largely out to make their own names and make money, not to educate or because their carefully chosen speech is their "right". Should we allow any financially motivated snake oil salesmen to spew whatever trash he likes into our society, even if it kills one thousand people indirectly?
Censorship is not inherently a government action, your post is contrary to the actual definition. [1]
[1] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/censorsh...
Censorship is now a taboo word? That's pretty ironic.
Some definitions have narrowed it's purposes to just "offensive", this one was slightly broader.
Given this meaning, Spotify's action is on the line of security and safety. JRE is taking heat for misinformation about covid, specifically about vaccines and alternative treatments, as well as his history of having platformed Alex Jones.
I'd say preventing snake oil salesmen from selling their products in your market due to safety concerns is a valid employment of censorship. People could actually die due to believing some of these extreme guests. Obviously, legally there is zero problem here since a private company can do as it wishes, freedom of speech doesn't give the freedom to dictate to companies what they must sell.
Stopping someone from spreading ignorance and hate is not censorship. That’s not what one imagines when they think of censorship. This is not stopping someone from saying things arbitrarily.
Then Spotify came busting in and decided that the open podcasting platform is obsolete and paid Joe Rogan $100 million for exclusive distribution of his content. So they’ve dug their own grave here.
Rogan has too. He didn’t have to take the deal that removed his podcast from open distribution and put it under corporate control. But he did. And he paved the way for many others to go down the same path and erode the open podcasting ecosystem. If he hadn’t done it he’d have none of these problems. So he’s dug his own grave too.
I wish both parties nothing but the best in digging their way out of the mess they created for themselves.
https://pwn.ersh.io/notes/why_specs_matter/
https://www.xml.com/pub/a/2002/12/18/dive-into-xml.html
https://web.archive.org/web/2004/http://diveintomark.org/arc...
http://www.smashcompany.com/technology/rss-has-been-damaged-...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7728020
>The worst use of the <BLINK> tag ever was the discussion held in the early days of RSS about escaping HTML in titles, whose attention-grabbing title went something like this: "Hey, what happens when you put a <BLINK> tag in the title???!!!"
>The content of that notorious discussion went on and off and on and off for weeks, giving all the netizens of the RSS community blogosphere terrible headaches, with people's entire blogs disappearing and reappearing every second, until it finally reached a flashing point, when Dave Winer humbly conceded that it wasn't the user's fault for being an idiot, and maybe just maybe there was tiny teeny little design flaw in RSS, and it wasn't actually such a great idea to allow HTML tags in RSS titles.
Also we have user-agents. Our userscripts (& amassed socialized, collective defenses they enable) should help provide us agency, to defend us against hijinx, to give us our own preferred view of systems. The web platform is uniquely able to handle these trivial little harassment cases, in ways far better than conventional software. This is just such a small-minded, speck-of-dust little concern to me, such a minor irrelevant point. Who cares how long & how stupid the thread on blink tag was, or how hyperbolic the lulz were at the time over it- this is easy to fix.
Podcasting not having a specification allows hollowed out soulless corporate ghouls to put any audio series they want online however they want & call it a podcast. Even a flawed, shitty specification at least defines some base idea, creates a general technical terrain that defines the idea. Podcasting got ripped the fuck off by monsters, because it had no specification. Technical cooperation is impossible without defined technical grounds.
Web hosting companies can be pressured into removing domains and hosting.
Companies running mobile App Stores can be forced to remove apps from their platform.
Social media sites are forced to take down content all the time.
This doesn't mean it will be impossible for people to find these types of content but with each level of restriction, the people who are able and willing to go through the pain to get the information will shrink to a point that they hold no power anymore.
The web was "open" because it was rather small and insignificant. Now that it can move markets and decide which way the world power shifts, those who are at risk of losing their power will do everything to control it so that it doesn't happen.
The medium is the message [1]. Recitations and radio shows have as much in common as linear-TV talk shows and streamed ones.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_medium_is_the_message
If you're exclusive to spotify, you're not really a podcast. You're a spodcast.
Ultimately they're doing what's good for business, but, well, some of those choices still have consequences.
> The deal with Mr. Rogan is a multiyear licensing agreement for an amount of time that couldn’t be learned.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/spotify-strikes-exclusive-podca...
This is the latest attack in an ongoing war on free speech. We are losing our freedoms. Today it's Joe Rogan's speech tomorrow it's yours.
If anything, Joe Rogan is giving up his free speech. No one is taking it.
Anyone can make a podcast and put it out. Zero stopping them other than maybe money to buy a device to record and send it.
YouTube was really the only other platform option for mass distribution at JRE scale.
He sold out and this is what happens to sellouts.
https://www.workandmoney.com/s/joe-rogans-house-austin-texas...
Why isn't anyone who think they have something to say that might be bad for business or controversial not just self-publish? It's normal that distributors and publications would be unsure about publishing controversial stuff that could be bad PR and bad for business, so self-publishing seems like the way to go.
1. He has an exclusive deal with Spotify preventing it.
2. To reach masses (masses != HN audience) you need to be on Spotify/Apple Music/YouTube. Not technically, but practically, it's a must.
The counter argument is that censorship is bad in all its forms. It’s one I and many others support.
In the status quo private people and companies are allowed to not accept contributions on their websites. This is not censorship, this is their right as runners of a plattform. Joe rogan can always go and create his own if he finds that no one wants to publish him.
I don't see how enabling the government to force people to publish speech they don't want to say isn't 100% worse than what we have now. It reminds me of stories from the soviet union.
But that's not what happened. Spotify is taking down content for financial reasons. They don't like the heat they are getting from the press, musicians, and yes maybe perhaps the government. And companies have always made editorial decisions for financial reasons.
If you think we should further carve into people's freedoms to associate (or, in this case, freedom of the press to publish or refrain from publishing Rogan) in the interests of broader freedom, what should that law look like and on what underlying philosophy should it be based?
There are obviously limits to free speech and there always have been. Can I perjure myself in front of a jury? Can I yell "fire" in a crowded theater? Each of these actions would have a consequence, and it is the act of knowingly provoking that consequence that is prohibited, not the act of speech itself.
It's probably the worst example as this was the metaphor was by the government when people were passing out anti war flyers opposing the draft during WWI. These same people were tried and convicted under the espionage and sedition acts. The judges unanimously sided with the government.
If I think there's a fire, or a problem, damn straight I'm going to speak up, and this definitely feels like Spotify is taking down things "the public", no court even required how great, find distasteful in the moment.
I think it's just a strange choice of word. Joe Rogan has the right to publish his podcasts uncensored. So he's not really being censored in the "free speech" sense. He still has the freedom to put his content uncensored on the internet for all to listen too if they choose.
Spotify has the right to choose what they publish or don't publish.
I think talking about censorship and free speech seems beyond the point to me, since I don't see any of those rights being taken away. And since I don't see the premise being true, I can't really take seriously the argument.
Instead, if you're just against the people who are saying that Joe Rogan is misleading and being harmful to society, and that by promoting and publishing his content, Spotify is also doing similar harm and thus they choose to boycott the companies products then discuss that. If you think people are making a baseless fuss about the harmful effects of his podcast on society and the efforts to fight COVID then bring that up instead.
> The counter argument is that censorship is bad in all its forms. It’s one I and many others support
I just want to point out that's not a counter-argument, that's a conclusion, and the argument for it is missing. If you want to make a point to the conclusion you need to explain the premise that you use to arrive there.
The problem here is Spotify are screwing up their editorial responsibilities. Joe Rogan has reached the sort of critical mass where he gets to decide what is in the public's interest to talk about. These faceless censors at Spotify aren't qualified to do that, or qualified to decide what is and isn't misinformation. They are acting foolishly outside their wheelhouse of creating platforms. They are screwing up by taking down interesting and entertaining content, making decisions that is going to get a very large audience upset with them.
They pay Rogan because he is better at this sort of decision than they are. This is a poor follow up.
1. to not lose as many customers as possible who are outraged with Rogan — maybe they did the math based on advertising profiling.
2. to not lose Joe Rogan, one of the most popular shows they have, and thus, customers/users.
3. to not spark further outrage from other popular artists who might leave.
4. to protect their name and brand.
5. to avoid being removed from the Apple App Store when Apple eventually lays the ban hammer down because "their app is spreading misinfo", just like the Alex Jones debacle that empowered Apple to assess app availability based on their political whims and agreement (abhorrent by the way). This goes for other platforms.
6. to avoid banks who manage their funds from canceling them for supporting a show, person, or stance the bank disagrees with.
We are truly in an ugly mess of global political wars where even the slightest wrong move in speech/expression will completely ruin a company or person's ability to survive—well, maybe survival isn't the issue, but undue harm is.
This is especially on the Left, who are too ready and willing to spark that ruin, viewing legal systems and power only as a tool to control their opposition, who has valid stances on myriad topics. On the Right, they complain a lot, but at least they aren't using any means necessary to actively change the fundamental course of people's lives, livelihood, and futures due to what boils down to a political disagreement in the realm of speech/expression.
We can't pretend that science is inherently fact just because it leads to forming facts later, when it has always been described as a a fallible process of discovery, leading to theories, which are either supported by evidence or amply refuted.
In this case, the doctors Rogan hosted, along with 100k+ other doctors globally have refuted the mainstream claims around vaccines and the handling of treatment — enough to require panels of discussion and enormous scrutiny towards the likes of Fauci and others who are claiming to "be science," in nothing other than pure dripping hubris and condescension towards anyone who dares to question them.
This is one problem we should be addressing, in addition to the censor-or-fail mentality affecting nearly every publishing platform.
If you look politically, it is just as true, and historically much more so I feel from the American right, which has normally had the church and the puritans on its side, and has always fought to get sex, LGBTQ, minorities, and even science removed from popular channels of discourse.
Also, as someone who follows the science, I'm not seeing 100k+ researchers with published data refuting the science. Doctors are not all scientist. Most practitioners have their own belief system, often from their own daily biases. And in the medical science community, it turns out, those things are being investigated, but are still far from being unambiguous and evidence backed. The policy makers are taking risks one way or another, because they're having to make decisions with limited scientific analysis, data, and experiments.
When you think of scientific consensus, what do you think it means? It is a confidence score in the current state of data and experiment. It is an assessment of given what we know today, what is most likely true. You can take bets against it, because it is probabilities and not certainties, science is always probabilistic unlike religion. But if you're a policy maker, taking a bet against the current odds seem like a gamble you shouldn't be making.
Thus from my stance, this is all political, and science is doing the right thing, and most policy makers that follows scientific consensus are just playing it safe with the odds.
The people who are trying to discredit science and the consensus are taking political bets, they want to discredit things to gain power, in the off chance the consensus is wrong, they win big politically, in the many more likely odds they'd be wrong, most people won't notice and it won't make the news.
The effect of it all though, from my point of view, is actually that it is used once again by the right as a way to convince people science is wrong all along. Which goes back to my initial take, historically, the right has always tried to silence science, and this to me is just another attempt at discrediting its processes and misrepresenting it's propositions and stance. It's trying to get people to instead believe that the political leaders and key scientists that have become agent of politics are more trustworthy than science itself, and that they now should listen to them exclusively for the real truth.
Going straight to politics, which is what really upsets people about Rogan, the standard here is people who spent multiple years of sustained campaigning confidently speculating that the US president is in league with the Russians. Or people before that who spent years onfidently speculating that the president was a Muslim trying to institute the Sharia in Texas or something crazy like that. I don't really remember the sillyness that far back in the Obama years. Joe Rogan at least has credentialed guests and lets them talk off-narritive. In that CNN horse-paste interview he had a CNN guy on who could have challenged him back or defended the position.
Rogan has much, much higher standards than what has traditionally been done for politics. He's probably doing better than traditional news reporting in other areas too.
Political appointees making public statements isn’t the government asking anyone to do anything.
While it may not be in legal terms, many see it as an opportunity to greenlight the bypassing of legal/legislative procedures, especially by those who consider the current administration(s) political allies.
As an example, Jen Psaki has stated in the past that they are working with social media to "handle disinformation", and the likes of wokie Zuckerberg wouldn't hesitate to operate outside of Congress or courts to satisfy the whims of his masters.
If the government had made a law making it illegal for Spotify to carry Joe Rogan, that would have been censorship. None of the conditions were even close.
Spotify is a private institution, and has the option of carrying content, or not, at their editorial discretion. You can disagree with their choice, and if you do, the proper redress is to put pressure on Spotify, not to claim it's government censorship, which it's not.
Of course, I could just start my own magazine if I want to publish my own content, but that would obviously be ridiculously cost prohibitive. And this was the norm for magazines, radio, TV. There was always strong editorial control by corporations.
Boom comes the internet, and all of that goes away. As long as you can convince your web host to host you, you can say what you like.
But now podcasts and content creators are making deals with big corporations again, and those corporations have the right to make the same decisions the magazine editors did. It's not censorship. It's how things have always been.
You can always build your own website, and the government will not interfere. There is your freedom of speech. Your web host might, but even that hasn't been an obstacle for extreme left/right wing sites, at least not so far. Worse comes to worse you can seed your content on bittorrent.
At the expense of huge barriers of entry for people to discover that content, or even care bothering with the hoops you would have to jump through to find something you're interested in, to the less tech savvy.
This is partly why the removal of content after its publication due to political pressure and threats of coercion is fundamentally the problem that needs to be addressed.
Whether it's semantically "censorship" or not is debatable, but the ill effects it has on society are irrefutable, by communicating:
1. these views need to be taken down.
2. these views need to be silenced.
3. the consumers of this information are "domestic terrorists" or "completely stupid", as readily communicated by major pundits on the Left, and at times, by our own leaders (Biden, Trudeau).
4. the 100,000+ global outspoken doctors who agree with these controversial views are fringe, misguided, deserving of losing their licenses, etc.
... All 4 reek of condescension and political bias in a way that damages and divides society to the extent that massive psychological harm is inflicted on millions of people seeking good information who want to be left alone, and risks enforcing a single stream of thought where panels of experts or public dialogue are discouraged.
That should alarm anyone who trusts the scientific method as a means to find answers and provide honest insight into something as imperative as a pandemic.
That’s a platitude, not an argument. And being absolutist is being sadly ignorant of the realities of public speech.
Censorship is not just sometimes good, it’s also sometimes required by law. There is a fairly long list of things that are explicitly illegal to say and are exceptions to US freedom of speech laws, including: libel, slander, obscenity, pornography, sedition, incitement, fighting words, classified information, copyright violation, trade secrets, state secrets, non-disclosure agreements, personal private information, and, last but not least: lies.
Censorship is required by the GDPR, for example, when dealing with Personally Identifying Information (PII). Because the freedoms to speak publicly can conflict with our own freedoms privately, some kinds of censorship are beneficial to people including you.
Commercial speech is specifically exempted from US Freedom of Speech laws. You can spend time getting upset over legal private censorship all you want, but it isn’t a Freedom of Speech issue, and it doesn’t amount to a meaningful moral or principled stand. Our courts have already established through two hundred years or argument and precedent that our principles are that cash corrupts speech and should not be a protected category.
Today I feel free speech is worse off in the US than it is over here, purely for cultural reasons.
Also: I thought the limits on the US idea of free speech was that things like yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theatre would not be covered by free speech. But hasn't the internet created another kind of crowded theatre in which people can yell the online equivalent of "Fire!" to deal substantial damage to society?
I think censorship is a slippery slope and I am not at all for it — yet I wonder if what we see here is just the beginning of society figuring out how to deal with free speech in the web. Finding the borders of what can reasonably be allowed, because "everything" proofed to be an unacceptably destructive answer to most.
This is a very good point. Many extremists (left and right) are shouting "fascism!" or "communism!" and moving masses of people. The analogy works quite well.
It's not a very well thought of equivalence when the individual can't even yell "I think there might be a fire" without being censored, because platforms think (and most of the time they're right) that consumers are too stupid.
I don't understand what you mean.
> when the individual can't even yell "I think there might be a fire" without being censored
Um, don't you think they should get banned when there isn't a fire?
Right wingers encourage and carry out violence against people, based on traits like race, otherness, etc. Left wingers mostly focus on property, fascists ("Antifa") and sometimes the police. Both kinds of violence are wrong to various degrees, but I can kinda understand that someone who formulates a threat of vandalism against corporate symbols will get banned less likely than someone who formulates violent threats against minorities or specific persons.
These two things are not the same, it is the difference between someone keying your mercedes and someone assaulting you in the street. One thing is shitty, but survivable, the other isn't.
This characterisation is not based on my feelings or the claims of either side, but backed by publications like the annual report on the protection of the constitution as it is made by the German Verfassungsschutz – an organization which can hardly be described as left leaning: https://www.verfassungsschutz.de/SharedDocs/publikationen/DE... I only found the summary in english, the full (German) version has more fine grained statistics which support my characterisation.
Scientific discussion, as faulty as it is, happened just fine behind the scenes. But people who have limited views of how things work think the smart-pants showing up on JRE is the real deal when most serious people know it's mostly hot air. (And of course compounded by multiple frustrations - which is totally understandable)
Otherwise, I can't see a solution to avoid "nazi-like" ideas spreading while also avoiding some level of central, authoritarian censorship.
In fact when it comes to sexuality and nudity europe feels a ton more free than the US when it comes to speech. We don't think a depiction of a female nipple that kids used to suck as kids will corrupt society for some weird religous reason for example. The US is incredibly prude and in that area censorship is rampant, yet nearly nobody complains here.
There is always soft censorship going on in any society — it is just not visible to those inside it if the big majority agrees. You don't need a central, authoritarian censorship for this you need people that have a common shared minimum standard of what they think is acceptable. Or aa you called it: enough "mental defenses"
But when you say "vibrant right wing" and they're "just...not allowed to display Nazi insignia", are you referring to the extreme right wing that're basically Nazis without the logos?
If so, given that they exist, what do you see as the point at all of having those bans on the iconography? It seems your society largely _does_ have the mental defenses that I agree with OP are necessary to combat the downsides of free speech writ large. So then why have those bans in place at all?
Yet many of the German Nazis still have those at home, they can be shown in educational contexts or in museums etc. Forbidding something doesn't make it go away, it just shows where the free democratic society you live in draws the border.
Germany has been a democracy before the Nazis took over in the 20s and it is one again today. However many Germans are well aware that this could change again in the future. You might have heard about the paradoxon of intolerance: if you are tolerant to fascists, because tolerance is your highest value, one day they might come to power and create an intolerant society — therefor if maintaining a tolerant society is our goal we paradoxically have to show intolerance to those who want to abolish it.
This means Germans weigh the value of our democracy surviving fascist uprising higher than even freedom of speech.
Fully agree.
I think we miss over and over this element in the “free speech debate”. We tend to consider “free speech” merely as “allowing an individual to express him/herself” and I think is more complex than that. From my perspective, “freedom of speech” should be a stack formed always by three elements:
1. Freedom of speech itself
2. Intellectual humbleness from the speaker.
3. Critical thinking from the listeners.
Without those elements, I think we will not progress on the big scale on this matter and will fall over and over again in the same “back and forth” empty fight of “should/shouldn’t we allow this guy to podcast those things?”.
smart people are equally susceptible to propaganda and mind control as dumb people. But smart people think they are immune through "critical thinking".
FB has teams of social scientists with all the data in the world to run experiments on us. We are herd animals who think we are all rugged individualists.
It's not strictly 'people' yelling fire to cause damage to society. It is nationstates, same as always, contriving TO damage competing nationstates in ingenious ways. Points for the ingenuity but these are still warlike acts. None of this happens in a vacuum, and so much of it would dry up and become irrelevant if not fed and directed from elsewhere.
Not to mention you don't know the contract. The only public knowledge about the contract comes from Rogans description orbit, which contradicts what you're saying.
So, no one is coming for your speech because you (being everyone here) don't matter enough.
The fact that this discourse can happen in the open is proof that free speech exists and is in force.
If the Biden administration could control speech they could ban anyone suggesting anything other than the official position of the government. Clearly this is not happening.
Likewise, if the government could control speech they could choose to force Neil Young to place his music back on Spotify for the sake of trade. This is not happening.
What freedoms can possible be referred to other than the First Amendment? This is the standard language of someone applying the First Amendment to private citizens and companies.
If you want to devolve into purely hypotheticals you’re going to find yourself on weak legs because the ultimate argument ends up being that “Joe Rogan speech is denying my freedom from hearing arguments I do not agree with.” These specific issues have been long settled by the rule of law. Being contrarian about this is neither productive or practical.
Where does my freedom end and yours begin? If I am infringing on what you feel is your freedom, where is that line? Do I get to play my loud music at 2AM when you have an early morning? Is it ok if you are sleeping in the next day so it doesn’t really matter that I’m keeping you up? When do these ultimate and unlimited unenumerated freedoms fall apart?
When they infringe on what society considers to be the normative freedoms we all get to enjoy.
Spotify gets to run their private business as they see fit because that is their freedom to do as long as they do not break a law or infringe upon your freedoms. Your perceived freedoms cannot infringe upon their freedoms.
The First Amendment states "Congress shall make no law ..."; it says only what the *gov't* can and cannot do
See https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/psaki-big-tech-should-c...
It's even in the article you posted, biased that it may be.
The government is not saying you can't publish misinformation, but that a responsible actor should acknowledge when it's publishing it.
Or maybe we petition those hosting Spotify servers & ISPs to ban the pages.
Actually, should spotify be resolvable by any DNS server hosted by a company?
Huh, or maybe there is a line to draw in the sand that isn't so strict? Nah /s
Neither is a settled question, though the world community tends to be leaning towards "yes" as the answer to the first and is busying itself with the mucky process of answering the second.
https://www.article19.org/data/files/Internet_Statement_Adop...
... And that's considering only the UN member nations. 70+ nations are not UN members and a statement like this has no bearing on them.
That's miles away from thinking paying people to proliferate lies about how vaccines work is cool.
You seem like you just wanted to condescend some Americans - a very tired trope on this site.
Or to put it more simply: would you consider parents who tell their children not to curse or risk punishment censorship? Or how about at school? How about requiring a dress code at a restaurant or school? Is this all censorship?
We have to be clear. Corporations editorializing has always been called editorializing, even when they do so at the government's behest, which has happened historically when the government feels publishing something could threaten national security or might create a panic. Or when a journalist is trying to curry favor with a politician. It's only censorship when a government authority figure threatens punishment.
It's not an argument about free speech. The first amendment and free speech are different things.
[0]: https://www.outkick.com/u-s-surgeon-general-calls-for-big-te...
It's not only about whether the falsehoods (say, National Enquirer type stuff, nonsense that hooks gullible people) are sexy in that they latch onto people's assumptions and fears. It's also about who's paying to keep pumping them out. None of this is organic. A lot of money goes into subsidizing this stuff. Follow the money and you end up with rival countries who actively want to see their enemies harmed, and have arrived at this very effective way of sowing chaos and sabotage.
People don't have to be that dumb, if you can flood their zone with crafted information to sway 'em. You just have to hook them and then lead them. You don't have to rely on people being incredibly, organically obtuse if you can play 'em and manipulate them, and that's where social media turned into a superweapon. It was for sale, and not very concerned about who was buying it, or why they were doing it. And here we are.
There is a reason people try to lump in any criticism with absolute insanity like the pizzagate conspiracies. They need the contrast to be as big as they can make it, so their story appears better than it is. Because on its own it really isn’t quite good enough.
Prior to the last few years, Propaganda has always been acknowledged as detrimental to society, and a weapon yielded by authoritarian anti-democratic regimes and forces such as Nazism, Fascism, Communism and others.
It's nature is to deceive, misled, and discredit the truth, in order to gain political power.
It's seen as many as a way to repress speech, by shouting louder and more clearly then the voices of truth. It silences other messages by publishing large content to the contrary as well as direct attacks on the truth to discredit it.
From that angle, it seems to me Propaganda itself is a weapon against free speech.
In my opinion that means when you have a lot of propaganda in your media and social spheres, you automatically have less free speech.
Now I reckon that just having someone censor what they think is propaganda is giving that person, if they were the one behind the propaganda in the first place, all the cards, as they can now promote Propaganda and silence voices against it.
And that's not what I'm saying the solution should be, but for me to be satisfied, I need a solution that recognizes both these dimensions. And the solution of just allow all form of propaganda I also see as terrible, it's the second worst one after the other, just let people spread confusion and attacks to the truth in masse is almost as bad as letting them silence the truth.
We need something better then that too.
I agree, but I just can't think what that would be. If you restrict propaganda; then you need to define propaganda. By doing that; you are perpetuating your or someone else's bias which would then be amplified by restricting everyone else from hearing of alternative ideas.
To be fair, you covered that; but I don't see how restricting speech does anything else.
In this case, sure Rogan is just an idiot, but he’s honestly allowed to be. Spotifys competition, with Google and other only caused problems because Spotify was dumb enough to pay Joe Rogan $100 million for an exclusive podcast. By doing so they went from just being a platform to having an editiorial responsibility.
Had Spotify not paid Joe Rogan, they could have defended their position as “just a platform provider” who shouldn’t interfer with content.
In fact, I can deal with bunch more free speech violations if I getting enough money that I and my children and my grandchildren will never know need and never have to work days in their lives.
Attempts are curtailing the spread of dangerous misinformation wouldn't happen without the dangerous misinformation first.
Rather than being mad for "people calling for censorship", maybe you should be mad for people making a profit of deaths, or the general anti-science, anti-education culture that consumes and amplifies it.
Is Joe Rogan really the problem? If you don't like it, don't listen to it. I don't.
Someone else framed this in terms of centralized vs decentralized distribution, which brings up a lot of important considerations — if Neil Young or Joni Mitchell would just distribute their songs themselves, they wouldn't have to issue an ultimatum. Likewise, if Rogan did so he wouldn't be the target of censorship.
But why isn't Young making that his hill? He doesn't care about freedom of speech, he just wants his ascendant. And Spotify could do what used to seem to me to be common sense, support its artists and drop those calling for restrictions on other artists' works.
This is a bad cultural route we're headed down. It doesn't go anywhere well. "Cancel culture" became a sort of buzzy topic of conversation, but it's a real problem and goes deeper than the referent of that catchphrase.
I also get cancelled on several forums on a regular basis when I say bad things about pharmaceutical companies or against government etc. even if it's completely neutral. I've seen all reasons already to censor me: - insults - conspiracy - talking about controversial topics in general
none of those were true, ever..
Also “cancel culture” is mostly not a bad thing, it’s more like “consequence culture”. The people who find themselves “cancelled” almost always still end up with large platforms.
But ultimately individuals can't and shouldn't be prevented from doing anything they want within the bounds of law.
> The people who find themselves “cancelled” almost always still end up with large platforms.
Survivorship bias. Most of the people who get cancelled just disappear. They don't have FU money or a big following. We only keep hearing about the few who are too big to cancel.
Plus you're not taking into account how much of a chilling effect all of this has. Many people are now self censoring. That has a regressive effect on society. We can't progress without free and open exchange of ideas.
I don’t buy the idea that the supposed “chilling effect” is a bad thing. If “self censoring” means there are fewer people spreadinf misinformation, then I’m all for it.
Are you suggesting that I, as a consumer, am in the wrong for choosing which companies I do business with?
Spotify's arbitrary choices about what content they want to host comes into it, what content they think is good for their business, etc. I don't think Spotify's choice to pay Rogan $100 million but not me is any more or less "censorship" than their choice of what episodes they want to include for that $100 million.
Does freedom require my boss to let me do whatever I want at work too? Or just Rogan?
None of that seems as clear to me as it does to you.
It's likely Rogan would have been banned from YouTube and Apple Podcasts had he not moved to Spotify. He could have moved to tiny platforms like Odysee or Rokfin that would likely have poor retention rates, or just relied on people adding his URL manually to Apple Podcasts, but come on. Nobody would do that.
The "death of the open web" problem isn't creators somehow consistently choosing to empower companies that keep hurting them. Users are doing that, and creators follow.
Imagine Tim Ferriss gets banned from all "non-open web" platforms today: podcast app indexes, Google Search, Twitter, Facebook, Spotify. We'll imagine he gets banned for zero reason: did nothing wrong, did nothing different, isn't any intrinsically less relevant or popular than he was yesterday. What's left is his website (if you remember the URL), and newsletter if you're already subscribed. You can add his podcast URL to your podcast app, but his podcast doesn't appear in Search. How much of his reach does he lose, overnight? 50%? 75%?
Google Search isn't the "open web", and if they don't list you, you don't exist. How can one creator fix that?
I'm not so sure. Just put the non controversial episodes on YouTube, then link and advertise the "problematic" episodes that are only available on your own platform.
This is what the Lotus Eaters do:
But why would nobody do that? How hard is it? Maybe it's too much trouble for something you don't care about, but for a content you enjoy, doing one copy-paste isn't very difficult?
Personally I resent Spotify for the whole move to podcasts.
There is still so much to do with music (streaming quality, music videos, lyrics, chords...)
Instead they choose to publish recordings of guys talking -- not experts in any subject, but random guys who are pretty ignorant of everything, and who, because they don't know anything, tend to have a very political conversation. This isn't art. This is just another way of wasting time.
As a result, Spotify is now in the business of policing content. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
I'm far more concerned with the terrible search function which puts all sorts of user created crap at the top that pretends to be what it's not, rather than album names.
Correct, but:
1. Everyone wants to be the Netflix of podcasts. 2. It's premium advertising real estate. The ad formats you can chuck into a podcast have higher CPM.
Caveat re 2.: I'm not sure how much advertising contributes to Spotify revenue, so take this one with a grain of salt. It used to be the next hot thing in adtech when I worked in the industry before 2021.
Remember: why charge the user directly, when you can charge them indirectly using a bunch of random middlemen (DAAST, VAST, potato, potahtoh)!
> Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
Example of a slightly less stupid* game: The Apple Podcasts app. The UX is mediocre, but the ability to pay for series/bundles is something I'd like to see more. Just let me pay for the content. As much as podcast content can be decoupled from the user agent, I'd like to see the same done with payments.
* or differently stupid
Not for long. I'm already starting to skip algorithmically inserted ads in podcasts because they're annoying claptrap like terrestrial radio ads. Adtech companies don't just come along and "use" ad space. They actively ruin its original value with their tactics.
By the way, based on your standards main stream news and most media content should be discouraged. The vast majority of it is “guys talking -- not experts in the [any] subject, but random guys who are pretty ignorant.”
But yes, as a user and subscriber, Spotify's business decisions matter to me. Because of their decision to host podcasts, which are low-content content and have nothing to do with music, I can't listen to artists who choose to dissociate themselves with that.
It's a loss for me, and the culprit is Spotify.
I have a problem with a service that I thought was all about music, hosting talk shows -- and talk shows that are US-centric, and controversial -- because as a consequence, said service becomes involved in a myriad of controversies and serves less music.
Of course I don't control what Spotify does; I will simply need to take my business elsewhere. It's not the end of the world; but it's annoying.
Now the home page is a bunch of podcasts they're trying to get me to listen to. Even though I've never listened to a single podcast through them.
It's really annoying that recommendations, which are the primary reason I use Spotify, have gotten worse, and the UI has gotten worse, and I now have to scroll past podcasts just to get to music. I cancelled my account because of it.
Trump's banned on practically all platforms. How many of his fans added his RSS to their app? (Wait, they don't use RSS apps). His only platform is now his website, where he publishes blog posts.
Did his fans follow him to the "open web"? Nope.
> Trump’s Website Traffic Dove a Yuge 99% Year Over Year
> DonaldJTrump.com went from 14 million unique visitors in April 2020 to just 161,000 in April 2021
Unfortunately, this is the case. As someone who graduated uni in 1995, I pine (lol) for the days where the internet was largely Usenet, IRC, and email listservs followed by the early days of the web. Social media and especially social media apps on mobile devices completely ruined it.
I see a whole lot of podcasts out there. They're mostly either something that someone does on the side either for fun or as part of their jobs or they're ad supported. (Honestly, I'm often a bit surprised that modest advertising supports obviously sizable staffs--even if I'm sure no one is getting rich.)
YMMV.
Heck I do it, but I do it for very few podcasts that I already know I like, mainly because discovery is so awkward.
He doesn’t know how to set that up? Oh… that’s sad.
A podcast with 10,000 listeners? Wow! Who'd have ever thought our little Joey would attract so much interest? Two years later, Joseph Productions is struggling to keep the doors open with only 500,000 listeners.
Back in the day, people found a website by word of mouth and bookmarked it. 100 page views a week was awesome. 1000 a month was maybe even better than all that money spent stuffing mailboxes with flyers. This internet thing has a lot of potential.
Today? If you can't break into the front page of a Google search, what's the point?
An automaker that sells $1 billion of product is in deep trouble because growth is flat. A city that hosts 2 million convention visitors a year is "struggling" and needs a new Chief of Tourism. A town with a population of 10,000 with clean streets and no crime is at a dead end because they don't have a Walmart and can't attract new businesses.
Human discontent is fascinating.
Unless Spotify hired a potato for counsel, no, Rogan probably can’t do that.
As the big money moves into chasing the metaverse, we may get another big wave of innovation in the open web space in the next five years or so.
It's only a matter of time before Google Chrome bans viewing url that Google considers harmful, as they already do with phishing URL
Spotify is NOT the open web. Rogan can host the audio files on his own site. That’s the open web.
Spotify is under no obligation to offer him or anyone any sort of service if they don’t want to.
Maybe Joe's bigger problem is he talks too much. He ought to spend time thinking about his business not seeing himself as a celebrity. You know, in a lot of places, stupidity is not well tolerated.
And Joe? Maybe think about something to say. Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr (boxer eg Ali), MLK, Federal papers, Shakespeare, Voltaire are remembered. In the daily spoken world, you'll accumulate many data points. Eventually turn to analysis, reflection, meaning.
Cause if you don't? I can still go back to the good guys above or merely talk to your guests myself. And we'll move on.
> Unidimensional people are boring
Joe has the biggest podcast in the world so obviously people don't find him boring.
> MLK or Ali would figure out how.
Figure out how to what?
"Just host your own website bro."
You'll get unbanked, say you move over to Bitcoin.
You'll then get banned from hosting company because they got a call from somebody, or they themselves were threatened with unbanking.
"Just use your own bare metal bro."
Say, data center will get a call from somebody and will drop you as a client.
"Just build your own data cecnter bro."
Cool, doable, who will uplink you? Comcast? They will drop you as well.
"Just build your own internet uplink bro."
Now this one is hard.
Here's where Web3 comes in, Rogan can host his content in IPFS and accept Bitcoin payments.
If that were to happen, he or his family wouuld probably get physically threatened then, sadly.
Freedom of speech is not freedom from consequence. You reap what you sow.
Of course it is not.
It is bait and switch process.
First you get a company create a large platform that makes it very difficult to for individual people to thrive in the space around it.
Then the large company starts deciding what can or cannot be published, effectively making it impossible for some people to even be present in that space.
Now, imagine the same happens for every possible space you could use to contact other people. Videos, podcasts, have a web page searchable on search engines, tweet, instant messaging, and so on and on. You are effectively excluded because your views do not match mainstream or touch controversial or taboo subjects.
I may not agree with Rogan or other people that are being excluded but that does not necessarily give me right to decide whether they shouldn't be heard by other people.
I strongly believe this is where judicial system is supposed to represent us to follow laws to judge which instances of speech are and which are not lawful.
What we have now is effectively mob rule.
Imagine some people win and decide that talking about racism should quieted down. Is it that hard to imagine?
Win what exactly?
Say you are leader of your tribe and you get bit by a dog. Then you decide all dogs should be removed from your village because dogs caused harm to you.
That's what the current social justice machine looks like to me and I don't think they are right.
Aren't right-wingers already forbidding schools from teaching about racism and sexual orientations in many states?
I'm not saying the far right are good either but right now you can't say they have as much an impact on the culture as the far left.
It would be bait and switch if they changed their terms unilaterally. In this case, they always had the right to remove content from their platform whenever they consider it harmful to their platform.
I know. My point is that he can do that, and he'd lose most of his reach. Or he can keep his reach, by staying on the big (closed web) platforms, and be at these corporations' mercy. Users have been trained: they want to watch videos, they open youtube.com, maybe TikTok, and start clicking and scrolling. Most people won't expand the effort to keep up with you if you're not on the big (closed web) platforms, who have effectively taken over the web and discoverability of content.
It's like Cloudflare's free speech argument: if you're big and controversial, you essentially need DDoS protection, meaning you're dependent on the goodwill of a few big corporations. From their corporate blog[0]:
> Increasing Dependence On A Few Giant Networks
> In a not-so-distant future, if we're not there already, it may be that if you're going to put content on the Internet you'll need to use a company with a giant network like Cloudflare, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, or Alibaba [to prevent being taken down].
> For context, Cloudflare currently handles around 10% of Internet requests.
> Without a clear framework as a guide for content regulation, a small number of companies will largely determine what can and cannot be online.
[0]: https://blog.cloudflare.com/why-we-terminated-daily-stormer/
> I know. My point is that he can do that, and he'd lose most of his reach.
The open web never promised that reach in the first place.
Previously, the "open web" was all there was, before the online walled gardens. Users were trained to get information that way. Now that traffic's been captured by the walled gardens that optimize for engagement. There's a reason Google Reader died, Google stated it: "declining use and relevance".
Going viral is essential to growing an audience. TikTok, YouTube, and Twitter offer that. The open web doesn't.
This is revisionist bullshit. Before Facebook et al AOL was the major walled garden. After AOL's star began to fade they and everyone else focused on becoming "homepages" with integrated search. They even provided helpful search toolbars! Social media is just the latest walled garden on the web.
Don't pretend the majority of web users have ever been bravely exploring the corners of every dark nook of the web. The majority has always been on some curated site with little deviation.
And? If a company spends money building a platform, including infrastructure, they can host whatever they want on it. They also don't need to host what they don't want. It doesn't matter if it's a hosting service or search engine or just a simple directory of links. No one owes anyone else their audience.
You're complaining that people might need to do work to get an audience.
Maybe if he was starting out. At this point his audience would follow him. That's not to mention that while he was a "traditional" podcast anyone could just add his RSS feed and listen. Indeed many of his listeners did just that before the Spotify deal. We're not yet at the point where client software is filtering content for us.
How is this any different than in the analogue world? If you want to rage against "the system" in a local bar or in your living room with a few of your friends, nobody is going to bother you. If you have a large following, you are likely to face counter-speech or even moral suasion by others who don't like what they are hearing.
You're free to speak, but as speech is centralized on private platforms, they get to make sure that nobody will ever hear you. This is good (tm).
And the American left, the ones who used to fight for free speech are perfectly fine with this, so long as they own the platforms. After all, the boot of authoritarianism is fine when you're the one wearing it.
Second, the idea that platforms are reacting to public opinion precisely goes against the idea of authoritarianism.
If we're going down this path -- why don't we talk about talk radio in the US, which is essentially a precusor to Joe Rogan style content and is dominated by right-wing shock jocks. Does the absolute dominance of the right wing on talk radio and the absence of left-wing content mean that there is no free speech? Or I guess to take it to the level of your dystopian fantasy, should we live in a world where cars are programmed to require the listener to listen to talk radio and prevent anyone in cars from turning off the dial?
Oh no, 99% of communication is on private platforms, surely this mean that topical discourse is extremely free as you can always scream into the void.
Pardon my sarcasm, but Freedom of Speech is fundamentally tied to the right to be (reasonably) heard as otherwise you'd have freedom of speech in almost every dystopian setting, provided nobody else hears you.
The reality of the situations is that these private platforms are the public squares of today, and like it or not, they represent the vast majority of communications. As such, the ability to censor across these platforms is vastly more powerful than any private censorship due to it's lack of constraints.
>Talk radio
Are there significant barriers to a left wing talk radio show? From what I understand, the issue isn't in institutional barriers, but instead a lack of a market. However, we've very much seen the inverse for right-wing platform, with anything from payment processors to cloudflare and other core infrastructural components locking them out.
Even better, your horrendous strawman of the cars which force said show upon listener neglects the fact that the Spotify user, if he wishes not to listen to Joe Rogan can... just not hit the play button?
At least in small-l Enlightment liberalism, there is no such "right to be heard" except in the context that people have a right to petition and speak out against the government. You can't compel an audience -- this is why there is a corrolary freedom of association.
I agree with you that what tends to foster healthy social relations and civil society is where there are social norms that encourage debate and opportunities for people from different backgrounds and experiences to interact.
There's a lot of scholarship on that topic and where those spaces exist there are freedoms associated with them, but I think it would be extreme to say that people have a right to an audience.
>The reality of the situations is that these private platforms are the public squares of today, and like it or not, they represent the vast majority of communications.
Internet platforms are a cheap imitation of the town square and I don't see why we should effectively compel speech in order to maintain something like this. Even talk radio is closer to the public square in that much of the programming is live and they take (curated) calls from the listening audience.
The Internet has failed as a viable alternative for the public sphere for a number of predictable reasons. If your argument is that we should have a public square where ideas are openly contested, it's far easier to do that when the decisions are made locally in a manner that's closer to the public.
>Are there significant barriers to a left wing talk radio show? From what I understand, the issue isn't in institutional barriers, but instead a lack of a market.
Talk radio used to be closer to a public square but due to consolidation of local stations under basically a couple of owners starting in the 1980's, right wing shock jocks dominate the schedule. So, to the extent that there isn't a "market," it's for the reason you complain about regarding tech platforms and the result has been the absolute opposite of your complaint -- right wing speech is constantly present there. And frankly, take a look at tech platforms and you'll see that there are huge volumes of right wing content.
>However, we've very much seen the inverse for right-wing platform, with anything from payment processors to cloudflare and other core infrastructural components locking them out.
Those platforms are the opposite of a public square where ideology is contested rather than explicitly defined.
To directly address your point -- a lot of those were shut down for reasons beyond their politics. You can find any number of expressly right wing forums and websites on the Internet. As I've pointed out, talk radio has far more reach and impact than some of these tech platforms for better or worse.
But he already had massive reach, that’s why Spotify paid $100 million. If his fans can be relied upon to sign up for Spotify and enter their credit card details you can bet they can be relied upon to click a link on a web page.
I know it’s a weak analogy but look at something like Wordle. It’s not on Steam, or in the App Store. It’s just a web page and it spread like wildfire despite what users are supposedly “trained” to do. We’re not giving people enough credit.
For example:
https://web.archive.org/web/20040622121025/joerogan.net/main...
And then you can always rely on multiple options for all of that. That's how we did stuff in the mid-90's.
You'll get unbanked, say you move over to Bitcoin.
You'll then get banned from hosting company because they got a call from somebody, or they themselves were threatened with unbanking.
"Just use your own bare metal bro."
Say, data center will get a call from somebody and will drop you as a client.
"Just build your own data cecnter bro."
Cool, doable, who will uplink you? Comcast? They will drop you as well.
"Just build your own internet uplink bro."
Now this one is hard.
Here's where Web3 comes in, Rogan can host his content in IPFS and accept Bitcoin payments.
If that were to happen, he or his family wouuld probably get physically threatened then, sadly.
And that’s without talking about lots of other sketchy podcasts that have good followings and haven’t been banned.
This is easy, they just have to put a widget tile the pod love subscribe button on their site, which makes it relatively easy for the user (if they know which podcast app they are using)
You mean by clicking a link on his website?
How likely is it that google would block joe rogan's website from search results for joe rogan?
I feel like people keep dodging a central issue here - joe rogan is not an independent being silenced on the open web by centralized platforms - he effectively sold the show to one of the platforms. They decide what happens with it (specifics of the terms of their agreement notwithstanding).
this isn't the first controversial audio programming on the internet, but it is the first one that is effectively owned by one of the listening platforms that actually has the power to do something without wading into unfathomably complicated waters, if they want to. that they (until today?) seemed not to want to - or to pretend that their relationship to the show is the same as twitter's relationship to me - is what is keeping this in the news.
To be 100% clear - it's not obvious to me what anyone should do in this case; joe, spotify, etc. I have my own opinions about the cost / benefit on the content but I also know enough to expect that things are probably more complicated than the popular narrative I have access to.
What I do know for sure is that Joe would have more control of his show's destiny, not less, if he had decided to keep distributing in a way that did not give a single entity complete control over whether a given piece of content could be distributed at all.
I disagree, unless he has his own on prem platform. Which isn’t beyond the realm of possibility.
I suppose at this point he could easily fund hosting the content himself if he can get out of the contract with Spotify.
As a US publisher, the First Amendment protects his right to do so.
He would have always be reliant on others who can be put under pressure to remove jre from their platform
For 100Mi? I'd have a very long list of things I would do for that price. "Selling out?" For sure.
I wouldn't have a podcast with the guests he picked for the show on several topics, surely (but he wasn't made to have those guests).
"Open podcast" is hard if you have to pay for bandwidth, and also it's just one of the most time consuming ways of generating content.
If i had the ability to just not see this podcast at all (like spotify already does for specific songs) i wouldn't have a horse in this race. However, being involuntarily subjected to something has a way of breeding intense dislike that wouldn't otherwise exist.
I started paying for Spotify years ago to remove ads, and now I appear to be paying _and_ getting ads.
rather than debate the meaning of IP, free markets, or the first amendment, we should he focusing on us - the people. our communites.
why is it that companies think its advantageous to silence people like this? it must be following the money. spotify is following the zeitgeist. the fact that everyone would rather erase this content because its existence is unbearable is a warning side. engendering disgust is a half step from dehumanization, and dehumanization is a half step from death.
a more likely angle is some intermediary like publishers or managers are making decisions through contracts or deals.
The comedians are extremely important to our society, because they have a way of saying things that need to be said that others are often afraid to. In fact when something is funny, its because our minds weren't able to predict the outcome. This is what worries me most, because we are seeing the comedians get silenced for laughing and joking around about political issues. Sure they're just having fun, but they are pointing things out and creating memes that spread through society that need to be heard. If they can't criticize certain ideologies and look at topics from a different perspective, we lose our ability as a society to realign ourselves to improve upon the situation that caused hilarity.
Once the comedians go, then we know people can't just joke around about certain topics. And then we know other forms of silencing are on its way.
Joe Rogan as a comedian is very different than Joe Rogan as a podcaster. He tries to be a very serious podcaster, and brings in serious people to debate serious subjects.
But he treats them all with the same respect and reverence. Which is a good attitude to take with people you meet 1on1, but may not be a dispassionate neutral position when you have a massive audience of tens of millions.
So when he brings in an astrophysicists and they teach the audience about the lifecycle of stars, it's educational and people both learn and are entertained. And the next guest is a conspiracy nut with a lot of PhDs that tells everyone COVID is overplayed and vaccines don't work, they also learn and are entertained.
Rogan has a sizeable enough audience that the impact of his COVID misinformation can be included as one of the reasons why Americans have so much COVID vaccine hesitancy, and directly contributes to the elevated COVID death toll in the US.
Being american is in many ways being rebellious. Vaccine mandates go in opposition to this very american spirit, a spirit of irreverance, rock and roll. Misinformation has nothing to do with why americans are refusing to get vaccinated. Informing them further wont change this fact, america would not have been founded without a rebellious spirit.
Your imposition of your beliefs by the way, are not to protect the other americans, its for your own "salvation". You want so desperately to be right, you're willing to only look at information that aligns with your belief system. You want your enemies to be wrong and you want them punished for not holding the same beliefs you do. If you really cared about the people who are not choosing to get vaccinated, you would let them be free to make their own choices, even if it means their death.
I repeat this over and over again. Everyone who wants to get vaccinated is vaccinated. Everyone who's willing to take the risk of not being vaccinated is willing to die for their freedom. There is nothing stopping us from opening up now. Its just theater for one side to blame the other for not being good little sheep. The anti-mandaters have been ready to open up for months now, and they don't care if they die, they don't care if they lose their jobs, they don't care if they are ostracized. Honk if your horny!
If only the ones pointing fingers saying we can't open up because of the unvaxxed, would stop crying and realize that we have been able to open up already for a long time now, we would be able to open up. But alas, it seems people aren't here to solve problems but to be angry, point fingers, and blame others for a situation which they can fix themselves. I'll repeat that one more time, you aren't here to debate or ameliorate or fix the situation, because if you were we would have been done with this a long time ago.
You're here because you want to be angry at the people who refuse stand on your side of the field like drunk men in a football stadium harassing anyone who wears the other color. And this is why you care so much about getting the unvaccinated vaccinated, not to save their lives. Oh no. you relish it when there's news of people who lie in hospital beds regretting not getting the vaccine. You relish in that schadenfreude, you relish in it because you are so desperate to be right, unable to realize its not about any information/misinformation/disinformation. Its about rebellion, you're just mad that some people just don't play along.
I don't think you made a single point. I believe its implicit however, that you have been offended.
All I see is an expert in a field, who I can't tell if they are right or not, disagreeing with other experts in the same field, who I also can't tell if they are right or not.
That’s basically what so-called canceling is about: asking people to own for their speech.
Every major institution is united to destroy Rogan, including the WH. The Press Secretary -- speaking on behalf of the US Govt -- demanded Spotify do more to stop him, and this is treated as normal and benign. Ask Julian Assange if effective dissent is permitted.
The power derived from controlling the flow of information is immense. That's why every tyrant and authoritarian wields censorship power. Tyranny can't exist without it. And as Orwell and Chomsky have both said, the most effective form isn't jailing dissidents but doing this.
Read what Orwell said about why censorship in the UK during the war was so much more effective than the overtly autocratic regimes that just imprisoned dissidents.
We're at the point where we also arrive in these cycles. If you object to the attempt to silence Rogan, then you will be instantly tarred with the same brush used to try to destroy him: You're a racist, anti-vax, etc. etc. That's the enforcement mechanism to keep everyone quiet.
-Glenn Greenwald
Apparently those 70 episodes have racial slurs in. It's not really an "all-out war on Rogan" as much as "Spotify don't want to be seen to be hosting racial slurs in their most visibly public content that they made a specific point of paying $$$ for", right?
Eventually one big content creator is going to move over to Web3 and it will cascade from there.
Every Web3 naysayer/sockpuppet will have to eat their lunch.
Say Rogan moves to Web3, that's it.
Comedian: 45, Political Commentator/Media Personality: 8, Brian Redban: 5, Health/Fitness: 2, Scientist: 2, Author: 2, Musician: 1, Pornstar: 1, (MMA) Fight Companion: 1, Giorgio Tsoukalos, Kevin Smith, Cliffy B & Johnny Cristo (can't even figure out who these last two are)
Michael Malice had 2 of his episodes pulled and just did a YouTube about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-1MHKIRUow. He did not request them to be removed and Joe did not either.
It's likely given that the episodes with Robert Malone (the controversial MRNA Vaccine creator) is still up that these recent take-downs are the result of some new algorithmic reviewer.
People on Reddit for instance have noted that many of these episodes talked about race and may have used racial epithets or alluded to race-based issues somehow and may have gotten automatically flagged or some such.
Some comedy is offensively misinformed and still legitimately funny at the same time (e.g. Chapelle had some parts that made me chuckle, and some parts where I dreaded stereotypes about me being reinforced). But some is just bad. Look at Steven Crowder doing "comedy" for instance.
That aside, I'd rather they had removed Abigail Shrier, who is not a comedian but an author of a book full of falsehoods and anecdotes that contributes to a hateful environment that has measurably increased violence against LGBT+ people (up ~100% in the past 5 years in the UK). Or at least for the JRE to have ANY trans person providing different context. Chelsea Manning would be amazing, but I'm not sure if she'd be interested either.
There's a lot of nuance lost upon invoking "cancel culture" ("So you've been publicly shamed" is the one piece of media that seems to successfully avoid doing so), and I generally dislike the term because it is often used either in offhand comments by people who don't see the issue or by free speech absolutists that disagree the paradox of tolerance even exists.
That aside, invoking false stereotypes doesn't generally make for exceptional comedy.
I'd love for someone to get Neil Young's take on this now.
Edit: Oh look, it's not just because Young made a stink about COVID shit, imagine that...
>Rogan went on Instagram Saturday to discuss the content of the old episodes, addressing two videos on social media of him saying a racial slur and another where he described a Black neighborhood as being similar to the Planet of the Apes movie.
https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/more-than-70...
"beep.. beep.. Spotify has had to interrupt this podcast as the next few moments contain words and ideas we deem to impure for our listeners to hear.. beep beep.." and that's why you shouldn't do DMT after eating a burrito.
>"A publisher has editorial control over a creator’s content — they can take action on the content before it’s even published,” he says, like editing episodes, removing guests, or preventing one from publishing at all. Ek noted that Spotify does have editorial control over the properties it owns outright, like The Ringer and Gimlet, but emphasized the distinction between those studios and Rogan. “Even though JRE is an exclusive, it is licensed content. It is important to note that we do not have creative control over Joe Rogan’s content. We don’t approve his guests in advance, and just like any other creator, we get his content when he publishes, and then we review it, and if it violates our policies, we take the appropriate enforcement actions.”
So contractually speaking, they can't edit the content, essentially making it all-or-nothing when it comes to an episode. If Rogan feels strongly enough about having an episode put back up but with the kind of edit you suggested, then the onus to do so is on him, not Spotify. That's the deal that Rogan signed.
[1]https://www.theverge.com/2022/2/3/22915456/spotify-ceo-joe-r...
People who grew up secular are completely unaware of how Southern Baptist in style all of this canceling and moralizing is. Like the church ladies, they turn moralizing into a competitive sport, and everyone loses.
What does Joe Rogan have to do at all with evangelical Christians?
As far as I can tell evangelicals and many other Christian denominations are some of the biggest cancellers to ever exist. The left cancels, too, of course. And only now that the left's actions are becoming broadly effective folks are finally talking about how cancellations affect society.
Most of the evangelicals I know are actually amazing people and are not like this at all. They are generous, kind, forgiving...but they are also humble and quiet and don't make a bunch of noise or stir up trouble. Unless you live with them, nobody really hears about this kind of Christian.
Its just that there is a certain vein of folk that really focus on what everyone else should and should not be doing. Kenneth Copeland style. That's who I was referencing, but did a sloppy job of distinguishing them.
Anyway.
>heard from the more cellophane elements of that crew
I should have made this distinction more clear. There are evangelical Christians whom I love dearly and hold in the highest regard. I don't want to call anyone a 'fake' Christian but there are definitely those that just seem to be focused purely on what others should and should not be doing. That's the kind I'm talking about here.
The danger is authoritarianism and centralisation, and in terms of centralisation big tech companies like Spotify have in spades. You could also feasibly argue they're authoritarian as no-one outside the company can influence policy outside of free market forces, but centralisation can make these companies somewhat immune to said forces, for instance Spotify being the exclusive distributor of Joe Rogan podcasts means those interested in his content have no choice but to continue using Spotify, even though some of his podcasts have been removed.
I have gone through a similar transition since the summer of 2020.
I have to say, I am quite resentful of people now. Because there was such amazing tool that you could learn other people's view and thoughts and a handful of loud mouths killed it.
Also, why would a content service policing its own content be in any way related to "The Open Web"?
Now if the domain providers, ICANN, ISPs, or any such internet utility entities would be actively doing this, that'd be a story about the web openness. Not a large streaming service deciding what to stream. Joe himself sold out to this entity knowing about this precise outcome. This has nothing to do with the web itself.
[April 13, 2021] https://www.businessinsider.com/joe-rogan-experience-podcast...
"Spotify deletes AN ADDITIONAL 71 Joe Rogan episodes"
Seems 42 episodes have been gone since around the article you posted (March-April 2021). Now 113 episodes are gone in total.
So are Spotify likely to remove more episodes soon when they waited almost a year since the last time? Hard to tell. The pressure on Spotify is probably higher this time.
Joe Rogan fans also seem to have endured the last batch of removals well. Perhaps this batch will anger them more since the "stakes" are higher due to the unusually heated controversy at the moment.
Or perhaps it will all be business as usual in a few months time.
> "If we want even a shot at achieving our bold ambitions, it will mean having content on Spotify that many of us may not be proud to be associated with," Ek said during the town hall. "Not anything goes, but there will be opinions, ideas and beliefs that we disagree with strongly and even makes us angry or sad."
https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/more-than-70...
At least he's sad. But sad tears are dried by dollars notes?
What is more likely is that they have controversial bit or two on them so they got flagged. There are episodes that have Joe Rogan say the N-word (not directed towards anyone and in-context, something he addressed today) could be that it was these episodes that were removed.
I actually listened to that one and even though I don't agree with everything that was discussed during that 3 hour interview, a few things struck me as odd in the huge wave of criticism that followed.
- Dr Malone has a rather impressive CV and a rather relevant one when it comes to Covid. This is a point that is glossed over by most media. He's not some crackpot theorist but somebody with a rather impressive research career centered on doing research around major virus outbreaks. Or at least that's what Joe Rogan spends about an hour of the interview trying to establish as the ground truth. Like him or not, when somebody like that says something, you might want to listen. Or if that reputation has some flaws, an eager fact checker might want to highlight that. Instead it was glossed over. If this is somehow not true, I've yet to find an article challenging that reputation.
- In the podcast, Dr Malone and Rogan discuss the cancel culture and the fact that several notable colleagues of his have had to deal with that. To the point where medical licenses were cancelled. And that he too has been under attack following a rather negative piece in the Atlantic.
- Some pretty harsh criticism is voiced towards Pfizer and the FDA's failure to do its job in overseeing the way Pfizer rushed the vaccine to market and maybe cut a few corners with testing protocols. Those are serious accusations. When they are made by somebody with Malone's apparent reputation, a serious journalist might want to fact check them. I've not seen any attempt at that.
- During the interview, Dr. Malone singles out the Atlantic article that criticized him and the author of that article as an inexperienced "woke" journalist that basically got their facts wrong. And then every other mainstream media goes on to use specifically that article as the core basis for "cancelling" Malone. What happened to allowing the other side to counter? Isn't that what you are supposed to do as a good journalist?
You don't have to agree with any of what was discussed during that interview of course but I find it notable that mainstream media gloss over most of that and fail to fact check any of it. There are some rather serious issues that were discussed in this interview that as of yet have not been challenged and instead are simply ignored.
For example, I read a pretty harsh article on the BBC a few days ago that was actually attempting to "fact check" exactly this episode on a few things and it left me wondering if they'd even bothered to listen to this episode or whether I actually listened to the same thing. A Guardian actually mentioned the Atlantic article. Neither of them gave Malone an opportunity to respond. Given the amount of time spent during the podcast discussing exactly that article, that is more than a bit sloppy.
I noticed as well the bias in Rogan's interview and maybe a bit eagerly jumping to conclusions by Joe Rogan. For me that falls under free speech. But still, it was an interesting exchange and packed with a lot of detail and well argued opinions that, as of yet, remain mostly unchallenged. That worries me.
For reference, I got vaccinated, boostered, and will get another shot. But I have a few growing concerns regarding the special status of Pfizer at this point and their apparent influence over mainstream media and politicians to basically run what looks like a character assassination campaign. There's plenty there for a serious journalist to fact check. Maybe the most worrying thing is the apparent self censure ship mainstream media seem to be applying to themselves.
I suppose that's representative of how we're seeing so many folks gloss over Dr. Malone's CV and so many other facts about this podcast in particular. Could it just be a criticism bandwagon where no one is _actually_ listening to Rogan?
Science doesn't work flawlessly, nor does it rely on some magical subset of the population deemed "scientists" having perfect knowledge and judgement. The rest of the process matters, precisely because scientists make mistakes likely at rates not really any different than anybody else. By waving Malone's scientist credentials, JR is implicitly saying that this story is science, but that whole angle is actually anti-science! Credentials alone don't define the scientific process.
Furthermore, people haven't internalized how difficult much of this is. Scientists make mistakes all the time because despite professionalism interpreting data isn't easy, and even peer review doesn't catch most errors. As a symptom of that consider what's underlying the replication crisis in science (which doesn't affect all science equally). Interpreting messy data with lots of confounders and imperfect experimental setups, imperfect measurements of those confounders, imperfect statistical models that simplify distribution characteristics, imperfect statistical tools that cannot capture all higher order effects, imperfect generalization from the specific experiment to the interesting take-home claim, etc etc etc may well be impossible in most cases. Finding the few nuggets of truth where we can cut through all that trickiness is not easy. And identifying flaws in such research is not easy either; experts get it wrong all the time. That's OK, that's normal. The hope isn't that every scientific claim is perfect, it's that the system eventually converges to a slightly better understanding of the world than we have now.
If Malone wants to present his interpretation to his peers: that's great, and fine. They're used to uncertainty, and have the best tools and training to deal with the cognitive dissonance of having lots of partially contradictory research. But his arguments seem to have failed to convince them - at least I'm not hearing much backup. However, cherry-picking "experts" with non-conventional views and presenting their interpretation to an audience that cannot interpret the uncertainty behind Malone's claims while supporting his credentials is essentially lying to listeners; you're encouraging them to draw false conclusions.
People are social animals; we're uniquely good at learning - and copying from - others. It's that copying that is our greatest strength, while also being a risk when mixed up with mass-media's ability to selectively amplify voices. And we all run our economies fully embracing that; which is why businesses hire experts and try to avoid all kinds of biases when it hits their bottom line; it's why advertisements work as a business; it's why we talk about propaganda and use information warfare in actual military conflicts. People aren't very good at filtering and processing information; they're great at _copying_ it and distributing that knowledge through social circles. Knowledge is power, but it's also a vulnerability.
If we cannot acknowledge our cognitive weaknesses, we cannot prevent being ruled by them. To put it another way: memes are real, and have the power to control us if we're not careful. Giving Malone an unfiltered megaphone through which to amplify what most other experts appear to conclude is nonsense is not being careful.
https://odysee.com/@Plazma:9/BroughtToYoubyPfizer:1
Absolutely not! Pfizer is not getting any sort of special treatment.
Blockchain aside, I do find it amusing that we can basically go back to 2005 tools to avoid some of this accelerating authoritarianism. Rip podcasts to MP3s, torrent or email them around. Same with movies, video clips, etc. Sure, mass distribution becomes less instant, but nobody can argue that Doom wasn't popular when it was released just because it wasn't on Steam or whatever.
The Rock just announced on Twitter some news about finding out just how much Joe Rogan used that slur.
News spreads fast in Hollywood circles. Maybe Spotify is trying to get ahead of the curve before any more controversies break out.
Love or hate JRE's content, I don't think anything good comes from silencing people
I'm just saying this general trend of cancellation and suppressing views that don't fit squarely in the box of "whatever society accepts at the moment" (which by the way changes by the minute) is troubling.
Buying perpetual rights to content is possible with the current web. I buy DRM free MP3s and have been for decades.
I wonder if it's not so much about the selection of the episodes as it is they'll be deleting many of them, and it just takes a while.
Unfortunately I think attacks on his having been prescribed ivermectin and his guests like the highly published cardiologist and the guy that contracts with the defense department and has patents related to MRNA really got on his nerves and recently he’s been leaning too hard into the “mainstream media lies” discussions, it’s nearly bordering on an obsession. I was surprised he was even discussing it with Jim Gaffigan.
We’re at a very bad place in American discourse. In a recent episode (past 2 weeks) Bill Maher quoted some survey that nearly a majority of Americans believe that we’re headed towards a civil war.
Attacking, degrading, deplatforming and silencing our fellow citizens is only going to push us further towards the brink.
It was also the NYT's Walter Duranty [1] that covered up Stalin's mass murder of millions in the Ukrainian Holodomor [2], and also, Stalin's purges and show trials. He didn't just cover up the Holodomor, or the Russian starvation, he actually fake fact-checked it in true Facebook fashion, writing the following "Any report of a famine in Russia is today an exaggeration or malignant propaganda. The food shortage, however, which has affected the whole population in the last year and particularly in the grain-producing provinces – the Ukraine, North Caucasus [i.e. Kuban Region], and the Lower Volga – has, however, caused heavy loss of life", and in doing so, refuted the reporting of Gareth Jones.
And Walter got a Pulitzer for his misinformation.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Stalins-Apologist-Walter-Duranty-Time...
For example I’m always annoyed when I see the treatment of Julian Assange and how the corporate press ignores or denigrates him.
If I’m having a 3 hour chat with Jim Gaffigan in public or private I’m not going to bring it up even once.
If I would chat with Bill Maher or Edward Snowden for 3 hours I’d assume it’d come up.
Joe just injects it into all of his discussions. I can understand why he would be bothered by the attacks on his character but it seems to me like it has become detrimental to his state of mind day to day.
Maybe he needs to smoke some weed or DMT by himself and do some introspection ;)
Well, the internet connected into a billion+ audience in last 20 years. We didn't have the ability to give a megaphone to every crackpot ~20 years ago. You'd have to physically rally people behind you, literally on the road to get your movement going. Now, Big Tech will gladly serve you that priviledge for a pretty penny off of clicks. And so will the media.
The natural physical filter is no more. It used to sort of self-censor people because they couldn't get a following. Now mainstream media is on the Internet and so are the gullible citizens. Blame the following: Big Tech, Internet Media houses (NYT is constantly full of rage, Fox too), Social Media giants (Twitter, FB, Tiktok, Reddit).
Next wave of understanding will come from in-person social life. It will be the anti-thesis of Metaverse.
The media landscape has become so strange in the past decade.
The more I think about it, advertising and more abstractly, corporatism, are really to blame.
How many of the “video games are violent and bad” or “Marilyn Manson is the devil” people were there really in 90’s early 2000’s? Starbucks hates Christmas people in the late 2000’s/early 2010’s?
Were they just amplified by the media? Is social media and the internet really to blame or did they just exploit a greedy industry already broken by years of mergers and acquisitions by conglomerates who already weren’t keen on spending on journalism?
It's because of JRE that I discovered this whole new world of podcasting.
It was an NPR pledge drive that really drove me to podcasts
There might be some material breach clauses there around censorship but it would guess if there are they are worded in a manner that can only be triggered if Spotify directly forces Joe to say something or to bring a specific guest to say something for example.
Yet if true, this is such BS. It's hard not to see Rogan, with his massive and mostly bipartisan audience, yet still polarizing and controversial discussions, as a litmus test for how well the West really embraces dissent. We're supposed to have invented dissent, right? And Joe Rogan, he's our little free speech canary--and the Western culture is killing him.
But if you don't care about this or don't think it's important, try to remember that bastard time traveling love child of Donne and Orwell: never send to know for whom the censors come.
Sigh. He shouldn't have posted that 9 minutes video "addressing the controversy" and taken such a conciliatory tone. People see those things as weakness or creating a fake-pretext to make it easier to censor him.
From Joe's perspective he probably doesn't care. He's got the exclusive deal, so not going to lose a dime if Spotify cancels him, and even if they does lose money... he probably doesn't really need the money. He's his own platform, his audience is in love with him not with the delivery mechanism.
From society's point of view these kind of binary outrages about censorship, to me, relate to a recent Glenn greenwald tweet where he says that society's going to end up needing two of everything depending on one's ideology: segregated websites, etc. And I think that's probably the point because the outrage about different views is helping to manufacture consent for introduction of a Chinese style censorship system in the West. But it'll be worse than the Chinese system which is guided by some sort of people focused ideology, as it'll be something corporate.
In light of the possible oppressing nature of this the smart thing for individuals to do is not to engage in these ridiculous outrage battles, to avoid inflaming this intolerance of other people's views. Instead of letting yourself be used to manufacture consent for whatever new horror is slumbering towards Bethlehem to be born, set yourself to manufacture your own tolerance toward people with different opinions and not let your strings be pulled by whoever is seeking to inflame these kind of divisions.
I mean we're supposed to be "the permeable", right? (Short Bus).
I checked for a couple of the episodes on Spotify (#1103 Tom Segura, #1218 Gad Saad) and could not find them, so it may be legit.
Is it though? Before spotify deal it was definitely true, but recently I tried some of his new episodes and he's much more conservative leaning nowadays. So much so I couldn't really watch it, stark contrast to earlier episodes with Duncan Trussel, Bill Burr and others. I heavily doubt he has much liberal audience nowadays.
How do you know that? I'm legitimately interested what kind of audience he has now and how it changed after he signed w/ spotify, but I don't think this info is available publicly, at least I can't find it.
There is something in the region of 100s of millions of downloads. Joe mentioned it and talked about it briefly on one of his shows.
I've personally spoken to people about Joe Rogan about interviews he has done to people in Belgium, UAE, the US, the UK, Germany. My boss listens to Joe Rogan and he is a Muslim that lives in Sheffield (UK) and I am pretty sure he probably votes Labour or Liberal Democrat.
Some people really need to talk to people outside of their bubble. Joe Rogan has mass appeal because he has long format conversations with interesting/noteworthy or notorious people. It the same reason Loius Theroux was popular back in the 90s and 00s.
He has a large inter-national audience and the number of people that have watched his podcast is in the 10s if not 100s of millions. That is more people than a lot of countries in Europe. Yet you find it hard to believe that the audience can have diverse (in the truest sense of the word)? That is quite frankly moronic.
As for the people I've talked to about it. These are people in aren't in my "bubble". I simply had a passing conversation with them in a break-room or on a Slack call (I work remote now) while waiting for people to filter in or some random people I've spoken to on Discord. These are not close friends, or people I even regularly speak to.
I find it hard to believe because up to this point you've made zero effort to offer any proof of that apart from 'trust me bro'. I'm skeptical that Joe has a diverse audience because to have that you need to make an effort, and from what podcasts I've listened of his he became noticeably less accepting of other viewpoints over time, on some topics like covid especially. This could easily lead towards radicalization of his audience, but you just dismiss this possibility. He should really follow his old advice and go to woods and do some ayahuasca, his third eye is fully closed at this point.
It's up to you to provide evidence to the contrary or you will have proven yourself to be arguing in bad faith which wastes people's time and harms discourse.
[0] https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/poll-finding/kff-co...
His questioning of the official wisdom is just the latest thing they have attacked him on.
You and I both have no accurate metrics on his audience demographic. We are not privvy to it. However I can infer from the size and the fact it is inter-nation that the idea that only people that fit inline with the "US Conservative" viewpoint cannot be correct. Which was the original claim I was responding to. I am not asking you to "trust me bro". I am asking you to use some good judgement.
As for Joe Rogan being conservative leaning is that is a nonsense. He is in support of socialised of healthcare, legalisation of cannabis and other viewpoints that many conservatives in the US are deeply opposed to. If you need any evidence of this watch his interview with Steven Crowder. They were at compete loggerheads about it. I was quite shocked at the time as the interview become extremely combative.
> I'm skeptic that Joe has a diverse audience because to have that you need to make an effort, and from what podcasts I've listened of his he became much less accepting of other viewpoints over time, on some topics like covid especially.
What Joe believe and his audience believes maybe different things. You are making the mistake that many people make of assuming that because somebody watches or supports somebody that they fall inline with the views of the host. Nothing could be further from the truth.
What Joe Rogan brings to the table is long form discussions with a guests that are generally aren't combative. The listeners can make up their own minds. This idea that people are too stupid to make up their own minds has is the bigotry of low expectations.
> This could easily lead towards radicalization of his audience, but you just dismiss this possibility. He should really follow his old advice and go to woods and do some ayahuasca, his third eye is fully closed at this point.
The radicalisation accusations comes from older news media which he is in direct competition to. I can dismiss it on those grounds alone. Joe Rogan is only guilty of having conversations that are deemed to be verboten in the current political climate. What is deemed to be verboten and what isn't is subject to political expediency.
My opinion of him attracting more conservative (not just US by the way) audience is based on his antivax stance, which is very popular among them, and he seems to shoehorn this topic quite frequently in his recent episodes.
> As for Joe Rogan being conservative leaning is that is a nonsense. He is in support of socialised of healthcare, legalisation of cannabis and other viewpoints that many conservatives in the US are deeply opposed to. If you need any evidence of this watch his interview with Steven Crowder. They were at compete loggerheads about it. I was quite shocked at the time as the interview become extremely combative.
I didn't watch it before because it's Crowder but you piqued my interest here, I'll have to watch it later.
> The radicalisation accusations comes from older news media which he is in direct competition to.
I'm not taking this argument from older media, I don't read it. I have visited /r/JoeRogan a lot over the years, and the discussions there changed quite a bit. The difference between new and old listeners and the discussions/opinions they have is quite palpable, although not scientifically admissible sadly.
I listen to another newscast frequently and I completely disagree with the host on vaccines (he is anti-vax, I am pro). You are assuming that people won't just skip that part of the podcast. People are willing to listen to people they deeply disagree with if they believe that person isn't being disingenuous.
Just because someone has some view point held by another group holds it doesn't mean that his existing audience is going to abandon them.
> I'm not taking this argument from older media, I don't read it. I have visited /r/JoeRogan a lot over the years, and the discussions there changed quite a bit. The difference between new and old listeners and the discussions/opinions they have is quite palpable, although not scientifically admissible sadly.
This is a complaint of many people that as the fanbase grows that the fanbase is of lower quality. It is a common complaint and you are not the first to complain about it.
That doesn't mean that his audience has become more conservative. It just means you have noticed that there are more conservatives present. Which ironically might indicate that his fanbase is more diverse, not less.
Also we don't need hard metrics to accept that podcast has broad appeal. Demanding data for what are obvious things is asinine. If it didn't have broad appeal it simply wouldn't be as popular as it is. I listen to things with much less broad appeal and those things will never become as large because of the very nature of the subjects they are talking about.
He has been continuing to do that. Before and after the move to spotify.
I looked up exactly when he moved to Spotify. According to Wikipedia it was May 2020. So I spent time (which you could have done before making your erronous claim, because I won't like being wrong) going through the spotify podcast listing.
Just scrolling through the listing since May 2020. I see Mike Tyson, Glenn Greenwald, Oliver Stone, Jon Stewart, Bret Weinstein (who politics is firmly on the left btw despite the claims to the contrary), Bill Burr, Dr Debra Soh. Generally there are a lot of musicians, comedians, body builders, MMA fighters. So there is a fair mix of Right, Left and non-political people on there.
So I don't see how you have a basis for your claim.
> After that I've seen him almost going for a streak, inviting right-wing guests one after another, but judging from responses I got here this might not be the case anymore, I'll have to listen to his recent podcasts to get a better picture.
Right so you are arguing from ignorance? You don't know who he has had on (as I've shown above). I actually looked them up just now just to see if you claim is valid and it clearly isn't.
But for a more meta and enlightening take, check out dang's comments on why any sufficiently large community/audience can often incorrectly seem to one person as biased toward a certain stance, when in reality it's that person's bias, rather than the community, that skews their interpretation. Dang explains it way better than I could: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... and https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
Exactly good point. Just like HN. It's an international community. It's funny (but I used to do it) to say that "HN is so conservative", "HN is so anti-free speech" or, "HN is so West coast liberal" when none of those things are true in reality.
Besides his vaccine skepticism, and willingness to talk to anyone, what about him do you think is conservative?
[0] https://nypost.com/2021/03/16/joe-rogan-sells-longtime-la-ho...
I remember the pre-Spot days where he was with Alex Jones, and talking about Trump and he really seemed a conservative or "new right" type of talking head at that time. Nowadays to me he seems waaaay more liberal, balanced and middle-of-the-road.
The effect could be that sort of thing that dang always talks about on HN where people have the impression that HN is really "anti-China", but in fact that's an artefact of their exposure to the articles that they engage with (being more likely to be those they disagree with)--or something like that, dang explains it way better. Reality is HN is really a thing with multiple facets...but people feel there is "astro-turfing" and stuff like that, when in fact it only seems that way. Better explanations: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
I guess it would also make sense to me if that was the case because, if not for any other reason, it would be a reality of his platform having increased so much. His wider audience demands and benefits from a wider range of guests with a wider range of views. It also makes sense to me that his own view of his purpose has grown from, "somehow orbiting the Trump, new right sphere" to "someone who talks to people from all backgrounds" about the issues of the day.
There are other multi-episode guests who had them all banned, like, I think, Dave Asprey, who is a blowhard. I think those who say things that situationally get their content removed are probably pushing the edge in a way I can appreciate.
Having the rights revert would have the dual benefit of enabling him to distribute such episodes, and disincentivizing spotify from pulling episodes too aggressively.
So many artists I listen to don't have a legitimate way to purchase their music, so moving to completely owned music is difficult (this would be optimal for me). Even if I was able to make that move, finding new music would be a lot more difficult. I will say that Spotify is 100% responsible for the new music I find, which it does do a good job at.
The problem is that the Spotify alternatives are even worse than Spotify. I really do think it is the best I have, but god damn do I dislike a lot about it.
I managed my own library for a decade+ before I got Spotify. I realized, like you, that the app, recommendations, etc. weren't worth it any more this year. So I switched back to managing my own library. It's a bit of work to set everything up, but it's honestly fun to consciously think of my library again. Give it a try -- happy to share details about my own setup if you're on the fence.
It would be nice to know how much Rogan is costing Spotify versus what he makes for them. At some point there will be a change in which way the cash flows and suddenly the show will be a problem for Spotify.
Its quite possible that spotify would have to breach contract to get him to be silent about x or y issue.
I think this may not be political. They may just want to tighten up the catalog, polish the brand they purchased, and have just the very best material?
Now spotify has complied with the government's wishes. We're now beyond "but it's a private company...", and indeed into censorship.
Glen Greenwald did a great piece on this topic a couple of days ago: https://rumble.com/vtyr34-democrats-are-pressuring-companies...
I strongly believe he's being punished for the COVID-related podcasts though. These are the ones in question for those who are brave enough to listen to what the mainstream media has been labeling "dangerous disinformation":
- #1747 Dr. Peter McCallaugh https://open.spotify.com/episode/0aZte37vtFTkYT7b0b04Qz?si=J...
- #1757 Dr. Robert Malone https://open.spotify.com/episode/3SCsueX2bZdbEzRtKOCEyT?si=4...
Worse, they spent a lot of money and knew what they were getting, so it just makes them look like idiots to investors.
That’s not playing the victim. It’s the plain truth.
Although in this case, the action to remove the proverbial cigarette ads was taken voluntarily by the private media (magazine/etc., in the case of the analogy), and not done as a result of government coersion.
The analogy is really disingenuous at best, and pretty stupid at worst.
It is much smaller than restriction on advertising.
This user needs to be called out for consistently being needlessly inflammatory and adding little to nothing to the conversation.
If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
Either way, the book burning analogy is beyond hyperbolic.
The point is simply to ground the conversation in reality, not in this peculiar language of extremes. Will spreading medical disinformation on a popular media platform kill people? Yes, probably. Is skepticism of mainstream medical narrative healthy? Yes, probably. Are those two things in tension with each other? Yes, usually. Should private platforms restrict content that will probably hurt people? Maybe, I don't know. Is this the moral or historical equivalent of book burning? No.
You could argue that in this particular case censorship probably won't even be effective. Rogan is seen as a something of a censorship martyr by quite a few people now, Streisand effect and all.
Also, there's the fact that most of the removed episodes have nothing to do with Covid-19.
Maybe you should be more cool headed yourself.
Perhaps it's just been a long week, but I don't really understand what you mean by "weakness" in this context.
Spotify is in an uncomfortable place right now. Some of the folks who generate some revenue for them aren't very happy with another guy who they bet on to generate even more revenue for them.
This, of course, made worse by the larger discussion around the pandemic.
Spotify is never going to win here. Regardless of what they do they will inevitably alienate a bunch of folks. The question for them is, "what's going to cause the least disruption to the revenue stream?"
I guess I'm not sure how (or why) it makes any difference, no matter what they choose to do.
Because they still carry a podcaster you disagree with and don't listen to? I don't see people alienated by Comcast because their basic cable subscription has FOX News and MSNBC.
Yes. And if they decide to stop carrying that podcaster (with whom I neither agree nor disagree, I have no basis for such a distinction), they will alienate a different set of people.
That was my whole point. They're damned if they do and damned if they don't.
Personally, I have no skin in that game (not as a user, an investor or a content creator), and if I liked popcorn (which is foul, disgusting stuff BTW) I'd be making some about now.
Edit: Fixed incorrect usage (podcaster/broadcaster).
I don't see it like that. This is their making.
They weren't damned when they signed Rogan, who was then already both controversial and very popular, and gave him $100m. Nobody forced it, and it was entirely predictable by Spotify that there would be more such controversies down the line. If they didn't want this catch 22, they didn't need to sign that deal.
Sad to see all the removed episodes are heavily comedian episodes…
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-60270467
Edit: the downvotes are interesting…
Maybe the move to Spotify shielded him for a while, making it harder for people to just run across these episodes by chance.
The Ancient Aliens guy? They sure are casting a wide net.
I mean, it's one thing to try to clamp down on medical misinformation during a pandemic, but it's an entirely different thing to clamp on harmless wackiness.
The people I know who get mad about it get really mad about it, because it is the satire to end all satire. Ancient astronaut theory is a fully consistent ideology and critical theory with at least as much applicability as any critical theory. I could easily write persuasive word for word transcriptions of any of their episodes for any current social issue and it would be as rigorous as the criteria for whatever else people already believe.
When you add a philosophical layer of Pascal's Wager meets Roko's Basilisk - Ancient Aliens may well be the pinnacle of human achievement.
We have an economy that functions by virtue of central banks pumping billions into venture capital firms. Venture capital investors in turn speculate on big tech companies that never make any profit. It's a top-down regulated economy full of Ponzi schemes, where a handful of brokers with a virtually unlimited supply of government money make the rules. That is why big tech and big business agenda's are constantly at odds with the popular opinion on the internet and society. They don't care because it is no longer your money they need.
>In another clip, Rogan spoke to a guest who has parents of different skin colors. "Powerful combination, genetic-wise, right?" Rogan said. "You get the body of the black man and then you get the mind of the white man all together in some strange combination... that doesn't, by the way, mean that black people don't have brains. It's a different brain. Don't get me wrong."
I can see some of the nuts on the list (like Eddie Bravo and, of course, Alex Jones), but seeing Gad Saad came as a surprise. Also, anyone knows what could have been wrong with David Seaman? (I haven't heard his episodes nor anything about him outside of his soccer/goalie career. But curiously he seemed to have been on the show pretty frequently.)
Where the understanding breaks down is, why now? Why Rogan? Why Covid? What about all the other ills of the world that need addressing and fixing? For those they're silent? Things more long running and sure to keep running long after Covid and/or Rogan is gone.
As a priority, is Rogan + Covid a top issue? Or is there something more nefarious going on here?
This also speaks to me of a solution in search of a problem.
You know what's really non restrictive? Distributing MP3s via RSS.
I'm all for the right to control how you present to the public, even if you are Twitter.com, but locking groups of people out of commerce just feels sinister.
Also even if your prediction is correct, that's "less" restrictive, and still not completely open. There will always be rules because whoever's paying for the service, whether it be advertisers, subscribers, or billionaires, has a list of things they really don't want to hear.
How does a private corporation action equate to government level censorship in the US?
And guess who, Russian government mouthpeace RT jumped right onto it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqx2BzSfdkI My guess is that they will be using this as a showcase and justification for their own shit at home.
If private corporations can police information and communication, they’re the de facto new government.
Worse, the handful of companies that police our communication (Apple, Google, etc) all have extremely big presences in Washington.
This is not what free speech looks like.
https://twitter.com/kingbullyo/status/1489666078431236100?s=...
It’s pretty fascinating.
I collected all the banned ones in audio form, but many sites don't allow you to create a torrent as a new user, so I gave up.
I get some of the names are problematic (from Spotify point of view) but Ferriss? There was a time when he was promoted all over the world.
"Page does not exist"
You are linking to a 404 page.
You pretty much didn't establish a legal fact, nor made a point that is even relevant to my statement.
It’s not like now the people who believed what he was saying are going to shrug their shoulders and start reading the “New England Journal of Medicine”.
*The stories and information expressed here are artistic works of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything mentioned here as fact.
And who is it calling names?
Now, if the platform were a publicly funded news organization or TV station, then you could make that argument with a straight face.
A couple years ago there was a giant banner at the top of my premium Spotify page reminding me not to beat up Asian people.
Thank goodness they curtailed my race-based violence as a Spotify subscriber, but I don't see how that makes them money.
I suppose the virtue signalling was a calculated ploy, but it seems like a long and winding road getting from those banners to more premium accounts.
Knowing that Spotify doesn't want you to beat up Asians gives the majority of people warm and fuzzies. And I suspect the tiny minority of dudes that want to punch an an old Asian lady are unlikely to do what Spotify tells them to do anyway.
https://nypost.com/2021/10/14/joe-rogan-takes-on-sanjay-gupt...
I find it really disturbing when our definition of "misinformation" is so one-sided.
A lot of people now suddenly hate Joe, the same way they hate Jordan Peterson, the same way they hated Trump. Every comment will have a preface or disclaimer: "I'm not a fan" in so many words. I did it above.
In a short time that will turn from "I don't support him but..." into something akin to "I see you referenced him, therefore I disregard anything else said"
A statement many people appeal to that nobody can substantiate.
Twice as many people died in the US last year from Heart Disease than from COVID, but I'm pretty sure we don't (yet) ban youtubers who extol the awesomeness of gluttonous fast food in weekly videos.
At some point, people need to grow up and take responsibility for themselves, and also allow others to do the liberty to do the same. If someone is an adult, in the US, and not vax'd by now, that's on them. Period. Not anyone else.
To put it another way, I owned not one, but two separate copies of "The Anarchists Cookbook" over the years growing up.. the number of governments I have, to date, attempted to overthrow? Zero. Why? Because I was capable of reviewing the offered material and going "yeah, not today prison, not today."
We've been over this shit since the beginning of the pandemic, it's surprising and disappointing to see people still framing it as a purely individual decision.
“There was no significant difference in viral load between vaccinated and unvaccinated, or between asymptomatic and symptomatic groups.“
[0] https://www.ucdavis.edu/health/covid-19/news/viral-loads-sim...
This is actually very easy to look up, if you put in the effort to do it correctly.
I find that HN is really creaking under the weight of "I'm genuinely curious for you to look something up for me, I looked for werewolf shoes and I didn't find anything about this"
This form of walrusing pretends to be diligent interest in factual information, but it's actually sloth, attempt to control others, and a giant "I don't know how to use search engines skillfully" sign around the neck
I did do my own googling. Here is what I found [0] - a study that seems to indicate the opposite of your claim that
> Viral load does not have anything to do with chance of spread
I realize it is difficult to infer tone in a comment but I would encourage you to assume good faith. It keeps this community civilized.
[0] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
This is one of your more incredible claims.
> I realize it is difficult to infer tone in a comment but I would encourage you to assume good faith. It keeps this community civilized.
Hey just fyi since you supposedly just learned what a walrus is, one thing they are known for is their requirement that everyone else assumes good faith long past the point of credulity.
Nobody is depriving you here. The trick to not being called a walrus is to not act like one. It's extremely easy!
It comes from this: http://wondermark.com/1k62/
Look at what that thing is saying, then look at what you said. *PERFECT MATCH*.
You really have no idea how much people hate this, do you?
I’m starting to understand how much hate you have in your heart for me. I’m still not sure why. Do you hate anyone who disagrees with you or am I special?
It's not an analogy. It's common internet slang for someone who won't stop arguing even though it's clear that nobody wants to listen to them talk and nobody is taking them seriously.
Your reply is pure, unadulterated walrusing.
It comes from an episode of Wondermark. http://wondermark.com/1k62/
.
> I did do my own googling. Here is what I found
Nothing of value, filtered through the eyes of someone who has no understanding of the material.
.
> I realize it is difficult to infer tone in a comment but I would encourage you to assume good faith.
This is a core Walrus concept: the idea that anyone who's sick of their inability to read the room just thinks the walrus is acting in bad faith, and that if the walrus appeals harder, the ocean will start to flow in the other direction and they'll suddenly be wanted, liked, and respected.
Predictably, this never actually works, but the reason a walrus is a walrus is that they cannot accept that their constant yammering is inappropriate, so they continue to frame things as "they just don't understand me."
You are overly fake-polite "i'm genuinely curious" because you get this reaction constantly and consistently from multiple people, and won't accept that your own behavior is inappropriate, so you're stuck in a series of decreasingly sensible explanations to avoid the obvious one.
It's simple.
Nobody cares if you're genuinely curious. You're bad at Googling, you give up the second you find something you think means you're right, you stand on evidence you don't understand, you give bare links and expect people to read them (when you obviously did not) and respond at length to tell you why this isn't right when you never even said what in it you're responding to.
I didn't even open your link.
Nobody does.
It should be obvious to absolutely anybody that the person you're trying to force into a conversation *DOES NOT WANT TO TALK TO YOU*.
"Oh well maybe if I'm just polite enough and I google up something where I read the headline"
Stop it, dude. You aren't a casual doctor. You aren't a casual scientist.
Nobody should have to waste their time explaining to you why what random BS you found on Google doesn't say what you thought it did.
I did make the mistake of opening your first link. It had absolutely nothing to do with what you claimed.
I'm tired. Please learn to read the room. Nobody wants to sit here watching you sit in a search engine looking for softballs to throw across the room.
Sealioning[0]. The term is sealioning...
Your poor attempt at sounding smart has backfired and instead you sound like a dumbass.
Unless you live a in cave on the side of the mountain surviving off berries and forgoing all human contact, nothing in life in a purely individual decision.
Dog owners are more likely to have their pet physically hurt a small child than people who choose hamsters. Owners of Dodge Charger Hellcats emit more CO2 to the environment than Prius owners. Nobody _needs_ to make six figures a year to survive, they could all perfectly well donate everything above their 'need' to a local soup kitchen... but I don't know anyone who does.
The last I checked, all of these things are still considered perfectly acceptable decisions in polite society. Nobody is out shaming those choices. Except maybe the Prius owners.
That's not a useful comparison because death due to heart disease from gluttony has a quite different probability density function than does death due to COVID. The former is wide but not tall, the latter is narrow but tall. The first is a lot easier to deal with than the second when it comes to health care system capacity limits.
Even if he was removed from the popular podcasts directories, all of the real podcast players allow you to subscribe by entering a URL to an RSS feed. He took the money. He knew what he was getting into.
Depends on what you mean by 'reference', but if someone treats an awful source like an authority then that's not a terrible response.
Contrary to popular misconception (usually just in the US) it has nothing to do with the government.
No, it isn't.
It's so tedious explaining this over and over
Censorship is to imitate the Roman Censors.
I see that you've tried to turn it into your smurf word for "being controlled," and that since you know you're wrong, you're pre-loading with "in practice"
Why? Because it's not like it in practice either, but "in practice" it's like what you want it to mean, and that's where you'll try to draw the metaphor from
To be censored is to be told that you cannot publish something at all
No, it does not mean "you cannot publish it here." You can still go publish somewhere else? Not censored.
The Food Network doesn't want to publish your physics thesis? You're not censored.
Facebook doesn't want your love letter to Nazis? (oh who are we kidding, of course they do.) But that's not censorship either.
YouTube wants to take down your anti-vax stuff? Still not censored.
UK Government says Starship Troopers cannot be published? Oh. Well that's actual censorship.
This isn't challenging, nobody's learning from your struggle, and you're boring the adults.
Stop.
So that’s your definition of censorship. However the first result on Google points to a different definition. One more in line with my understanding.
> What is a simple definition of censorship?
> Censorship, the suppression of words, images, or ideas that are "offensive," happens whenever some people succeed in imposing their personal political or moral values on others. Censorship can be carried out by the government as well as private pressure groups.
In short, it doesn’t stop being censorship simply because it is an individual or corporation. Only censorship by the US Government is un-constitutional. So censorship isn’t always illegal. That doesn’t mean it isn’t censorship.
First they spent $100m on a very controversial figure, just to get an exclusive contract.
When he acted controversially they stood up for him, making plenty of people mad and getting others to disassociate themselves from Spotify (Young, Mitchell). Wouldn’t surprise me if they were having some quiet issues with sponsors/ads.
Now they seem to be removing episodes, but reportedly not the controversial ones? This of course goes over poorly with both the pro (why remove them?) and anti (why not the problem ones?) camps.
Hope it was all worth it Spotify. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer company trying to destroy a formerly open ecosystem.
It’s another thing to actively pay to _create_ such content. That’s the big issue here.
I think the only way this wouldn’t have happened is if Rogan had made himself less controversial over time before a flare up like this occurred.
But I don’t think Spotify wanted a vanilla personality, if so why pay $100m for Rogan?
Possibly try to grease Rogan's hand to lay low on the vaccine topic/guests for a while.
Edit: I missed the obvious sarcasm. I need coffee.
Edit: Enjoy your coffee!
The correct move is to be a free speech maximalist (in either political direction) until laws are broken. You can also make rules against directed harassment and threats.
Tell the detractors that "it could just as easily be your side being silenced", because that's the honest truth.
People will complain, but only the fringes will leave.
See Voat.
That's not quite right. Voat was populated by the fringe that was evicted from other more mainstream platforms, Reddit in particular. So the primary demographic of their userbase is "people whose content isn't allowed on Reddit". Which given that Reddit is fairly permissive compared with many places results in an incredibly skewed userbase. Without a compelling reason for users that are more mainstream to switch I think this result is unsurprising.
The "free speech" side of fedi suffers from this dynamic as well. There's a growing contingent that's there simply because they were removed from Twitter.
This is all a great example of why deplatforming doesn't work at all. In seeking to silence various groups they instead get concentrated in specific locations which results in a greater degree of polarization.
This is plainly censorship (within Spotify's rights, but still censorship) and while nobody's 1A rights have been violated, it's still affecting someone's ability to publish to their audience.
That's not a legal issue, but a moral one.
I think it's a very different situation, simply sharing your content on a platform, where I think free speech is much more relevant, vs. being contracted to produce content for a platform, where I think it stands to reason that you're expected to produce what the platform want.
But I think the motivation for "free speech maximalism", from the perspective of a tech platform, is more strategy than principle: if you're in a position to make a decision as to who or what to silence, you are going to be subject to constant pressure from all directions, rightly or wrongly. Sticking to your guns and enforcing a limited and specific scope (illegality, ToS violations) is a "bright line" policy. Holding to it consistently means not having to constantly justify and take heat for tough gray-area decisions, which is a losing game anyway, since you won't be able to appease everyone no matter what you do.
The issue with unadorned free speech maximalism (aside from people legitimately complaining about idiots spewing lies) is that it also dictates a 100% hands-off approach to even the most egregious spamming, as spam is legal.
Free speech principles don't preclude some reasonable standards for curation of content. The key is to be consistent, regardless of perspective, and completely transparent. Where private, commercial platforms like FB, Reddit and Twitter have erred is in uneven enforcement of arbitrarily shifting rules which are hardly clear even when disclosed.
They were pretty much doomed to eventual failure once they started responding to subjective and rapidly changing woke sensibilities. Weirdly, I've read thoughtful posts by both Jack Dorsey and Zuckerberg which clearly show they understand they are being backed into a untenable 'no-win' corner yet still find it impossible to avoid.
It’s much easier. You don’t need to be a free speech maximalist _on your platform_. Trying to tie up the whole podcast market under your umbrella is what caused this.
If Rogan was still doing things himself with a standard podcast RSS feed her could still be heard without issue. Spotify listeners could listen without issue. Spotify wouldn’t be getting dragged in the media.
This is 100% Spotify’s fault for trying to control someone controversial and was 100% foreseeable.
> Every platform is eventually going to have to deal with this
I agree. It’s part and parcel of being a platform. You know what’s better than platforms _allowing_ people to say what they want?
What we had before Spotify (etc.) tried to take over: the open world of podcasting.
It seems that those concerned about him selling out now have a point, but I doubt anyone cares - JR still made his money and that decision was ultimately up to him.
But perhaps the big lesson here for others is to run your own company and host your own show.
And give up $100M? LOL why on earth would that be the big lesson?
Don't bite the hand that feeds you, tear it off.
How Spotify ever thought this was a good idea still eludes me
We know what he chose. I’d argue it’s what the vast majority would choose.
But they both (Spotify and Rogan) knew what they were choosing.
I wonder if that is part of why Spotify started pushing podcasts so hard - they can get exclusive content easier that way vs going with "commodity" music artists which will be available at all their competitors.
But exclusive audio content (Podcasts, audio books, etc) is something they can do to keep people from switching. Whether it’s only on Spotify or maybe just comes out a week early and ad free, it’s additional value the other services can’t provide.
Plus Spotify has made all the streaming money they will. They’re not going to grow another 100m users on music alone. But wall street wants more and podcasts driving subscriptions and podcast advertising is a real growth opportunity to make Wallstreet happy.
Of course none of this is good for Frank and Sally podcast listener. But when did that ever matter? The big companies have decided how things will work.
Yeah I don't get this part. While I could understand why they'd want to remove Alex Jones, there are uncontroversial names like Tim Ferriss who were also removed.
We get to find out if Rogan actually has principles or if he just talks a good game. I'm hoping he's not a sellout and this situation results in his move to some decentralized platform. 80% of his audience will follow, and the ones he lost to YouTube will come back.
It'd be awesome if he dragged all his podcaster buddies along with him, and the comics and musicians followed.
Uninstalled Spotify, guess no more jre podcast until Joe moves. If he doesn't, I'm not interested in whatever kind of person sells out like that after taking such a powerful stand on censorship.
What platform? Why do you need a platform? Podcasts were already 100% open. No platform necessary.
Almost feels like the point of many articles is to tell people the correct thoughts on a topic, instead of actually finding out and reporting how people feel.
My guess is it'll be against some country singer who is against abortion/anti illegal immigration.
And what is his relation to Jordan Peterson? I'm seeing a weird attempt to link the two in the media (presumably as an attempt to use the former to discredit the latter) but I've never even heard of Joe Rogan except in the context of trollposts (which usually do not give the necessary background I need to know what's going on)
The biggest political shift in history is happening right now.
There's been a 14% shift from Democrat to Republican in the PAST YEAR.
Censorship over open dialogue is always a short sighted solution and it turns people from colleagues who disagree into enemies.
Reference: https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q...
All the Joe Rogans of the world want is audience stats - let him pivot to exposing quacks and continue to take fools money.
This is the best explanation I've heard of the show's appeal: Back when I was a kid you didn’t need Joe Rogan. Your best friend had a 27 year-old brother who was a fucking loser who would smoke pot in a room with blacklight posters and tell you that the Mayans invented cell phones.
Joe Rogan facilitates discussion with interesting people and not much more. Mainstream news has done just about as poorly as it could have reporting facts, unknowns, and probabilities with Covid...as the anointed truthsayers, they most definitely created a vacuum by dismissing credible questions and skepticism (lab leak, mask effectiveness, how to think about vaccines long term). And they have been eager to bless the opinions of those who have been far too optimistic https://youtu.be/_FvWnlIEHVo
There is no way we just deplatform or content moderate our way out of honestly misguided information like Malone and McCullough. Misinformation and disinformation cannot include people who are trying in good faith to present a pov that happens to just be just wrong…at some point in time that would include…everyone.
What I hate about “skeptics” these days is that they think an opinion is a valid scientific argument. I mean, just go work with the published data and prove it isn’t valid. Instead, we have guys who go around saying things like “Covid is not a virus, it’s our own EXOSOMES duh”. And clueless idiots who amplify those.
Ben Shapiro is a funny guy sometimes, but his recent episode on JRE was disgusting. “We don’t need any measures because I got sick and I was fine!”. That ignores all of the scientific and clinical evidence on the population scale.
And while he's featured a few conspiracy theorists, they're a minority and are balanced out by credentialed 'serious' scientists.
That's all beside the point though - purging conversations from the internet is bad, and the culture that cheers this on is worse.
Regarding censorship, where does one draw the line? Misinformation? A conversation encouraging self-harm? The harm of others? Without holding media to some reasonable standard an anything goes mentality develops.
I haven't been listening to it in recent months because it seems the show has become has obsessed with covid and is all covid all the time with some comedians thrown in now and then, not to mention Spotify as a platform is kind of a chore to use for podcasts.
"COVID-19: A Second Opinion" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jMONZMuS2U
"On January 24, 2022 Senator Ron Johnson invited a group of world renowned doctors and medical experts to the U.S. Senate to provide a different perspective on the global pandemic response, the current state of knowledge of early and hospital treatment, vaccine efficacy and safety, what went right, what went wrong, what should be done now, and what needs to be addressed long term. This 38 minute video highlights the 5-hour discussion."
The 38 minute compilation is a great, easily consumable summary - however here's the link to the full 5+ hours of testimony - https://rumble.com/vt62y6-covid-19-a-second-opinion.html - which obviously has far more depth to it.
The reason I ask if you've seen it is Joe's had multiple of these highly credentialed, front-line workers (doctors, researchers, etc. with expert domain knowledge and experience), on his podcast - some multiple times.
It's going to get harder to ignore these people and what they have to say the more formal the setting the information is shared.
Another video everyone should watch is Maddie De Garay's mother giving testimony for 10 minutes of their experience of her daughter being in Pfizer's 12-15 year old vaccine clinical trial. The limitations designed into the clinical trial reporting app might be most obvious to UX designers, but I think everyone will be able to understand the design implications: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2GKPYzL_JQ
And then you didn't watch the Maddie De Garay video either, otherwise anyone who watches it and cares about integrity would be shocked - and would want to make sure it's looked into - just alone on the clinical trial reporting app design alone is highly disturbing.
Edit to add: You haven't posted in 4 years and you have few comments to begin with? That's a bit curious. I wonder what an analysis of the HN accounts that instantly jump to putting smear campaign links on these different credible, articulate doctors/researchers/experts, would look like. Any way to do such a study dang, ideally with directly or indirectly getting upvote and downvote data to see if there's other interesting patterns that emerge?
That component on its own is not a complex problem - it's blindingly obvious.
You're trying to gaslight to categorize something as simple and obvious is a "conspiracy theory" is "classic" attempt to lazily smear and demonize, meanwhile you actually avoid addressing my specific points.
So let's address 1 of my specific points shall we, and not claim that I'm merely being a perfectionist to dismiss discussing it?
Is it a problem, yes or no, that the adverse events that could be reported by participants in at least the Pfizer mRNA clinical trial for 12-15 year olds limited what could be reported by highly specifically creating a relatively short list of relatively minor potential adverse events? Yes or no?
Now, please brainstorm and extrapolate to the potential consequences of the app that participants were provided as the only means of reporting adverse events, and write out your thoughts here.
It's obvious you don't care much for integrity as you dismiss crucial structure for an apparatus meant to and necessary to capture the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth - but interestingly the operators and designers of the clinical trial decided to design the app to not allow any free-form writing option - like you and I are able to do here?
Surely you're smart enough and have enough integrity to agree that that is unacceptable, especially if you believe in the scientific method? Or perhaps you'd be okay if in scientific studies words like "harmful" weren't allowed to be used?
The avoidance and cognitive dissonance you must be experiencing to dismiss this as me being perfectionist is something else.
Did you even watch or analyze everything said in the Maddie De Garay video? I'd go line-by-line through it with you and dive into the implications if you want?
And then what about the 5+ hour long testimony that Senator Ron Johnson had on January ~25th, that included a bunch of highly credentialed frontline doctors and other experts with incredible amounts of domain experience but that have been being smeared and suppressed in the mainstream media? What are your thoughts on these highly intelligent, articulate individuals sharing their experiences and backing it up with third-party study data when necessary? Are they all perfectionists too or they're all lying too?
Here's the 38 minute shorter compilation version EVERYONE should watch even if you're not willing to dive into the studies or domain knowledge they're referencing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jMONZMuS2U (38 mins)
Here's the full 5+ hours of testimony: https://rumble.com/vt62y6-covid-19-a-second-opinion.html
"On January 24, 2022 Senator Ron Johnson invited a group of world renowned doctors and medical experts to the U.S. Senate to provide a different perspective on the global pandemic response, the current state of knowledge of early and hospital treatment, vaccine efficacy and safety, what went right, what went wrong, what should be done now, and what needs to be addressed long term. This 38 minute video highlights the 5-hour discussion."
P.S. Even the U.S. military is represented in these testimonial video: one of the best kept, if not the best kept dataset on a set of humans' health - where you'll hear their lawyer state that prior to the mandated vaccine there was 1.7 million issues reported during the sam period before the vaccines, once vaccines started the issues reported JUST in/by the military was OVER 20 MILLION more than the period before; so are they all lists too, unreliable sources I imagine you'll say, just like VAERS is apparently/conveniently unreliable - which if true then why/how are we even allowing deployment of new treatments if there's no apparatus to detect potential harm? We should just trust clinical trials are designed "good enough" - but not flawlessly like the scientific method would require, because we don't want to be called perfectionist do we!
Fuck ANYONE who tries to demonize or put me dowm or dismisses me when I'm concerned about the safety of children, or anyone for that matter. You should be ashamed of yourself for your current reaction to this - care about the safety of our children, by caring about the integrity and quality of clinical trials, please.
--
Kids have gotten sick from the vaccine - but a lot more kids have gotten sick due to Covid.
You obviously feel very strongly about this, but no I don't see any evidence anywhere here that there was any intentional wrongdoing.
> Is it a problem, yes or no, that the adverse events that could be reported by participants in at least the Pfizer mRNA clinical trial for 12-15 year olds limited what could be reported by highly specifically creating a relatively short list of relatively minor potential adverse events? Yes or no?
It is hard to parse some of what you're saying, but what I think you're saying is is it bad that the app only permitted selection of certain things.
First, I don't know this is true. I haven't:
1) Seen the app
2) Seen multiple people talking about the app
3) Seen other apps used for similar trials
From what I know of end-users of software, and also what I know about parents and people who are politically motivated, I have a lot of skepticism about the claims in the video. Note I said skepticism, not that they are lying. I am skeptical.
I don't know if this claim is true.
But, let's assume it is true. There is another list of things I don't know:
1) Were there other ways to report these effects?
2) Is there a clinical reason why the app would be designed this way?
3) What else don't I know that should stop me from jumping to a really big conclusion? (that the entire world is in on some vaccine conspiracy).
Even if the answer is definitively "the app was designed to limit selection of adverse effects of the vaccine during the trial" there is a set of other things that I just don't know:
1) Was the app designed this way intentionally, or was it a consequence of poor planning? Or a bad software team? Again, being familiar with software, I'm skeptical that if we get this far (see all my previous points...) it was intentional
2) What else don't we know that we can't get from a ten minute video?
Your claims are remarkable - they need to be remarkably substantiated, and you're not doing that.
You're being a classic conspiracy theorist, just like I said in my first comment.
The biggest problem, for me, with Rogan’s podcast is he brings on people that know nothing about a subject but let’s them talk as if they are some kind of expert. They have long conversations where Rogan as little if anything of value and just let’s a lot of weirdos that will get views ramble on endlessly for 2 hours. Then things get cut and paste around social media and misinformation spreads like wild fire.
A recent example is Dr Jordan Peterson talking about climate change. He lacks even a basic understanding but was sitting there talking about it with the confidence of a climate expert and as he is a Doctor people take him seriously about everything and it’s just god damn awful.
The same problem exists on a lot of “news” shows/channels where they have a genuine expert that has studied a subject for 20+ years and is known and respected world wide and sit them next to someone that read something on Facebook then got very vocal about it as it matched their feelings on the subject.
This whole “we need two sides” concept is bullshit when the two sides are not equals but are presented and treated as equals.
It gives credibility to people that deserve none as they have done nothing to earn it.
I think multiple points of view are extremely important but you need to ensure the people involved are as close to equal as possible with regards to their professional standing and experience. Not some random blogger.
Ironically, I see this on HN, too. Not always, but frequently enough.
What I'm talking about is comment sections (often about economics, climate change, etc.) with commenters who post with iron-clad confidence, only to be contradicted by other commenters who take the opposite position with the same confidence.
I read these dueling comments and think, "Everyone seems so sure of themselves. But I have no clue as to who is correct here."
I find this jarring because: a) somebody has to be wrong in these wars of dueling facts and b) I'm surprised because I feel that HN is enriched with reasonably bright people who I'd expect would be more circumspect with their comments.
I'm not surprised about the abject confusion that the general public has when discussing similar topics, especially since I am often confused reading HN comments. I know that's arrogant of me, but there's truth in there, too.
tldr: If I can't get a handle on dueling "facts" when reading HN, how the hell can I expect Joe Rogan or his listeners to do the same?
The biggest misconception is that an expert in some field(especially STEM) has “common sense” in other areas. My former classmate is doing a PhD in automation, but claimed vaccines are harmful and he’d rather get sick “naturally”. The same goes for politics, economics, and other fields. It’s like people can’t imagine they might be completely ignorant in the areas outside their field of work.
Agreed. My expertise is in molecular biology / genetics and when I see those topics discussed on HN, I can ferret out the BS reasonably well.
But with other topics, I'm out of my depth.
I've come to believe that "critical thinking" is often a matter of knowing which expert to trust. And sometimes, knowing who to trust is difficult.
an actual historian dissected the claims and it was all complete nonsense:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/sh92go/in_a_...
Personally, I thought that it was hilarious that Peterson criticized climate scientists for building models without the full information, because that is exactly what his field of clinical psychologists do.
Your argument is that because some people choose to get their information about the vax and climate change from people that are not experts in those fields none of us should have access to that media.
If that is how you feel you should also be in favor of shutting down fast food restaurants and liquor stores because some people don't take responsibility in those areas and become obese and alcoholics.
These people are more than welcome to setup a blog and write up their views should they wish but there is an astronomical difference between them posting their views on whatever subject they wish and inviting them onto a podcast listened to by tens of millions as if they are some sort of respected expert in the subject.
Also as I said in my original post this is not just aimed at Rogan's podcast but the media in general. Many times I have seen experts in a subject with decades of experience sat next to a random person from MumsNet or some other online community with anecdotes and nothing more. Yet they are sat side by side, given similar air time to communicate their views as if they are in some way 'equals' on the subject which is misrepresentation.
In no way am I saying the non-expert random person should be silenced but they also should not be given such a wide reaching platform due to laziness of the "news" service to find an actual expert to argue the other side.
I never said we have to silence them. I don't think we have to give them a megaphone to hundreds of millions of people unchecked either though. Why should we give a platform to any random person? Do we no longer care about a persons expertise on the subject?
> Your argument is that because some people choose to get their information about the vax and climate change from people that are not experts in those fields none of us should have access to that media.
Again not what I said and you know it.
> If that is how you feel you should also be in favor of shutting down fast food restaurants and liquor stores because some people don't take responsibility in those areas and become obese and alcoholics.
No, I would be in favour of better educating people. You know by having them get information from actual experts with regards to their bodily health to either lose weight/never become obese in the first place, show how to enjoy alcohol without it becoming an addiction, etc.
In 2002 all of the media and the experts said that Saddam Hussain had WMDs and ties to Al-Qaeda and we went to war and hundreds of thousands of innocent people died.
I'm not saying that experts don't exist, I would much rather have the chief surgeon at Harvard perform surgery on me than some random guy off the street. But, the idea that "non-experts" shouldn't be able to you cannot question climate scientists on a large platform gets your right back to the Iraq war situation.
Honestly, I wish people took climate change more seriously, and I wish that people didn't become alcoholics and obese, but that is a tradeoff that exists in a free country.
I'm not saying you cannot question climate scientists though. I'm not saying you cannot question any expert.
The difference, and my complaint, is that this isn't just questioning experts but taking an expert and a non-expert and treating them as if they are equal experts in the subject. People listen to these non-experts in a subject (because they are an expert in some other subject) and accept what they are saying as correct.
If you want to discuss clinical psychology then by all means have Jordon Peterson on, after all he is a clinical psychologist.
But don't ask a clinical psychologist about quantum computing or climate change or any other subject they're not an expert on and present what they say as if they're an expert.
Imagine inviting a race horse breeder on a show to discuss horse racing and then the conversation pivots to Formula 1 engines and race car physics and you treat what they say as expert advice because well horse racing and Formula 1 are both racing sports aren't they. Surely this persons knowledge of breeding a horse transfers over right? That's about the same level of "transfer" that Jordon Peterson's clinical psychologist background has to climate change science.
As for Iraq and WMD that is a far more complicated discussion and the comment section of Hacker News is not the place for it.
Jordan Peterson clearly doesn't understand climate change in detail, I understand that, and I can watch him talk without thinking that climate change is a hoax.
That isn't what I said. I specifically said "Formula 1 engines and race car physics". I put it this way because I mean the specifics of Formula 1 engines and car physics. Not a general chat about Formula 1 but specific specialist areas.
Sure if it was just a general "oh what do you think of F1?" and they shared their personal opinion then fine but if they start saying stuff like "All the F1 engineers in the whole world don't know what they're doing" nobody is going to take them seriously (or you would hope not).
It is this important point, general opinion vs specific area expertise, that is the big issue for me.
Following the Dr Peterson example, had he said something like "oof I think climate change is all overblown and stupid and I don't agree with any of it" then that is his opinion and of course he is entitled to voice his own opinion.
But he didn't say that, he went in to attack specifics about climate models that he patently has no expertise in but talks as if he does. He presented it as if he is sharing factual information and that "nobody" working in climate science is correct.
Just discovered he lives in the same town as me.
> Graham Bruce Hancock… promotes pseudoscientific theories… An example of pseudohistory and pseudoarchaeology, his work has neither been peer reviewed nor published in academic journals.
> Mark Lehner, an American archaeologist and egyptologist, has disputed Schoch's analysis, stating, "You don't overthrow Egyptian history based on one phenomenon like a weathering profile... that is how pseudoscience is done, not real science."
> Historian Ronald H. Fritze has described Schoch as a "pseudohistorical and pseudoscientific writer".
Randall Carlson doesn’t have a wiki page.
I hope anyone who is interested in these people is listening to them out of morbid curiosity and not because they think they are deserving of any credence whatsoever. The scientific method is not optional. If you don’t use it, you’re not a scientist.
Rogan, however, appears to genuinely want to believe (and promote) these theories, whether they have any factual basis or not.
And my God, everything isn't about science or the scientific method. Some of this stuff is just plain entertaining to me. Is it really so wrong to listen to these things and just have a great time thinking about crazy and out there stuff?
You say this like it's bad.
Anyway, going back to reading my book about how aliens told Bill Gates how to invent computers in 1992, leading him to found Apple and help the Allies win World War 2. It’s the story the mainstream media doesn’t want you to hear.
To clarify the point; the fact that a former president commented on the UAPs at all was remarkable. To expand, even the existence and decades long cover up Area 51 and the proven things that have come from those programs (like the f-117) are examples of the .1% of “conspiracy” quackery that did happen to be true.
I maintain these types of things are the gateway or hook that draw people deeper into conspiracies, but I’m no expert.
That is why we are listening to him.
I can't speak for others, but I'm there for the guests. Not all of them, but I find Joe to be an entertaining host, mostly because it's just different. The ones I enjoy the most are the ones where it feels like some random dude has recognised he's on a train with a leading world expert in a field he finds interesting but knows nothing about. It's just earnest conversation from someone curious.
> when he does occasionally have a legitimate scientist he can barely muster any response beyond “wow that blows my mind”
I love watching Joe explore complex subject matter with experts. There are so few interesting interviews with scientists just talking about why they do what they do and what it is that they find fascinating and why they love their craft. There are some real good interviews where they just geek out and Joe asks them really stoned questions. It's not for everyone, I guess.
More to the point, as long as people hold elitist opinions like this, then there will be people who distrust science (and people abusing that to make money)
A lot of inequality comes not from some people being inherently superior/inferior or deserving/undeserving but from information management, a crucial part of this is to secure it from competing actors while sharing it with those with overlapping interests. That is the definition of a conspiracy.
Even if there were actually no known conspiracies, we can't know they don't exist unless something comes out... so it would be healthy to have some conspiracy theories around and events being tested against those theories. The mere motivation to suppress them is very likely to come from either ignorance or malice. I believe the very fact that "conspiracy theories" are treated with such hostility is a tell that there are much bigger conspiracies that we need to uncover.
I find Julian Assange's take on something similar from back in the day very interesting: https://www.frontlineclub.com/julian_assange_the_state_and_t...
His interviews aren't template question a, template question b, it comes across like a natural conversation, an opportunity to talk to experts in a plethora of different topics and gain an insight to the distilled wisdom of individuals who have spent their life researching their respective fields.
Personally anyway ^^
It was entertaining to me - I can’t tell how what he does now or in 10 years affects what is said in the previous episodes
Maybe you should start there. It pays to learn to empathise with and try to understand other people. You don't have to like someone else, but its not that hard to see why people do listen to his podcast. You don't have to be that dismissive of other people.
What Spotify is doing now just pisses off both sides. Pro speech people don't like this, JRE listeners don't like this, and anti Rogan people won't stop until he's 'canceled' completely.
EDIT: A lot of reflexive comments here very quickly assuming this is about removing Rogan's COVID-sensitive content, but looking at the list of removed episodes and how many guests are the subjects of serious sexual allegations, people might want to consider who they're actually defending here.
But even still, its censorship Rogan opted into to get $$$.
People threatening to leave if you let someone else talk is pretty much a good definition of being against free speech.
That's free speech. As long as no one is being coerced through violence, attempting to influence someone's opinion and convince them to associate or disassociate with someone is clearly free speech. Hell, it describes most political speech and a lot of journalism.
> That's free speech.
Yes, speaking to someone in an attempt to pressure them not to speak to someone else is indeed a form of speech. However, the things you are expressing (ie attempting to pressure them) is an active attempt to curtail someone else's speech. So you are using your speech in an attempt to curtail someone else's speech.
> As long as no one is being coerced through violence, attempting to influence someone's opinion and convince them to associate or disassociate with someone is clearly free speech.
No one claimed otherwise. It is clearly legal to do so. It is also clearly an anti free speech sort of thing to do.
No, it isn't merely a form of speech. It's free speech. It's just as free as any other kind of speech. Free speech allows for conflict with speech, and it doesn't guarantee all speech all possible platforms.
You don't get to decide that only the speech you agree with gets to be free, but speech that disagrees with that doesn't.
That's not a 'free speech issue,' that's free speech in action. Until the government is punishing someone for their speech, everyone has and is using free speech.
If you want to see actual free speech issues, look at the anti-BDS laws[1].
The US affords protections against the government infringing your speech, but not (generally) against private parties doing so.
To put it bluntly, cancel culture is anti free speech by definition.
Trying to duck consequences by crying 'cancel culture' is itself an attempt to stifle speech. When consumers protest a business, they're using speech, not 'pressure,' because in that context 'pressure' isn't a real thing. There's government action against a business, and there's plain old real world consequences.
This isn't true in the age of social media. A relatively small protest (i.e. not large enough to register on their financials) can create a disproportionate amount of bad press which can exert pressure on a company to act. Manipulating social media algorithms to surface your grievance to the top of the trending list is a kind of pressure.
I don't see how this different from a 'relatively small protest' in front of a company HQ getting into the traditional press. If your protest is enough to activate the 'hot' algorithm, so be it. That's not manipulating social media, that's just how social media works. Trying to stifle that kind of protest is the same kind of 'censorship' that's being complained about here.
Furthermore, if it's enough to cause a company to act, it's 100% because it's large enough to register on their financials in some form.
Social media makes it different. Social media turns intensity of belief into the appearance of large numbers. Networks of like-minded individuals are mobilized to present a consistent message to some entity. This gives the appearance of high motivation and a large representative sample, when in reality it is neither. Social media protests incur zero cost to participate and are non-representative. The engagement algorithms and the built-in network dynamics eliminates traditional barriers to protesting and do much of the work of creating these frequent uproars.
I used the term manipulation because the dynamic brought out through social media is fundamentally dependent on social media.
>Furthermore, if it's enough to cause a company to act, it's 100% because it's large enough to register on their financials in some form.
Being fearful of financial backlash doesn't entail that the actual real-world backlash would be significant. The fact that social media eliminates the cost to participate in these "protests" suggests that when participation has actual costs it will be greatly reduced.
Don't get me wrong, freedom cuts both ways; some hindrances to free speech are perfectly legal, and would ironically be violations of the First Amendment to prevent! But let's not pretend that these kinds of boycotts are simple discomfort or preference: they're an attempt to change what is permissible to say, because "won't somebody think of the children?"
From my perspective it is a very obvious double standard when people consider not wanting Spotify to air anti-trans rhetoric an attack on free speech, but calling the acceptance of trans people a sign of societal collapse is not a problem at all.
Is it not a form of censorship when someone tries every tactic in the book to discredit a group of people to an audience of millions?
> tries every tactic in the book to discredit a group of people
At the risk of taking the bait: this is clear evidence you've never listened to the show. If you want to take issue with his specific opinions on trans women in fighting sports, or specific choices of guests, fair enough; but the "guilt by association" and "indictment by meme" is exactly why we all benefit from free and open discourse, including being tolerant and charitable to opposing views. Witness the "cancellations" of trans-ally voices like ContraPoints or Lindsay Ellis (the latter of whom was so traumatized that she quit YouTube permanently).
If you want to draw a line somewhere, and withdraw your participation by boycott, or even ostracize other participants, that's your right; but don't pretend you're not attempting to influence societal discourse, and prevent third-party conversations and associations.
To your example, if the party had say 50k people at it, correct. I really wouldn't care what one person was saying.
That aside, I don't recall Rogan attacking anyone directly.
Say Bob and Sue are at the party talking about some topic you don't approve of. They aren't talking to you, just each other. You request that the host remove them. The host refuses. So you attempt to get other people to very vocally leave the place in order to pressure the host to kick Bob and Sue out.
Such actions are clearly anti free speech.
So...exercising your free speech to convince other people to exercise their free speech? Sounds like lots of free speech to me.
It's up to the host whose presence they value more. They can always decide you're an irritating busybody and no one wants your negativity killing the vibe.
Is the capital G government intervening with discourse? If not then there are no first amendment violations.
There are ways in which I can legally attempt to suppress the speech of others, for example I could threaten to evict guests from my home if they bring up certain topics. That is clearly an action which goes against the principles of freedom of speech but it is not a violation of any of the protections provided by the US government.
Whether such an action on my part is morally justified will be highly context dependent. For example, perhaps I don't want certain topics discussed in front of my children in my own home?
"Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."
>Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
I think it is reasonable to assume that when the vast majority of Americans refer to "free speech" they are making reference to the Bill of Rights and the First amendment. Unfortunately, most people don't seem to understand that, with regards to speech, the 1st amendment is only about preventing government from curtailing speech. It doesn't say any private individual or company has to allow all speech.
Nobody is silencing JRE.
I don't get why people keep trying to turn this into a free speech issue. It's not. I stopped giving Spotify money because they're going to turn around and use it to fund thinga I disagree with. So I guess people are just arguing against capitalism?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simone_de_Beauvoir#Personal_li... [2] https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2021/4/16/reckoning-with-... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_petition_against_age_of...
I don't like the guy, but I just do what any other reasonable person does and don't listen to him.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__CvmS6uw7E&t=342s
"You're a fucking idiot go online and look it up."
"Go online and look it up."
"Yeah you've learned from shit from college. When was the last time you got online and researched primates."
"Stupid"
"Stupid"
"Stupid"
…
"I have a vagina."
If active lies are being pushed, it’s a different manner.
I’m “pro speech” and I love this! No governmental agency stepped in and told Spotify what to do. They have a contract with Joe Rogan, are ostensibly honoring it, and are making a decision on what speech they want to be associated with.
What else do you want them to do? Be forced by someone to make a decision they don’t want to make? That doesn’t sound like something someone who believes in free speech would want.
Would we really want to further limit what right holders are allowed to do with their property?
Yes they did.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
Government is one of those things where even the appearance of impropriety is as nad as the actual thing. That crossed the line into blatant quid-pro-quo.
I'm sorry, but no, I don't buy your assertion. Being in a position of power over someone or something and dropping a line like that is as good as an outright threat of violence, no matter how badly people don't want others to consider it as such because it makes their lives easier, and conscience lighter.
> I’m “pro speech” and I love this!
Then I don't think you're as pro speech as you seem to think you are. You clearly appear to be in favor of protections against the government curtailing your speech. However you do not appear to value the principle of free speech very highly or you would be against both people attempting to pressure Spotify and also Spotify picking and choosing content.
Yes, they clearly have a legal and moral right to do so. However, exercising that right clearly runs counter to the principles of free speech.
We can go round and round all day, but the idea that someone can’t voice their opinion against someone else and that someone can’t pick and choose what they want to promote feels very anti-pro-speech to me.
Spotify is not being compelled by any authority to remove or keep content on their platform. The only reason why Spotify hosts or removes content is because it's what they decide is best given market pressures.
Spotify sells subscriptions to content to make a profit. If something harms that why should they be forced to endure that?
Or alternatively: whose speech is more important? Rogans or Spotify's?
If companies can select who they will publish to please people they can also 'cancel' them to please people, or do artists somehow have tenure once they become controversial and divisive?
Hope all you Rogan haters love Rogan because this is how you get more of him. Congrats!
2) Is it breach? Is that against the terms of his deal? I would assume that Spotify has reserved the right to limit content it doesn't like.
Conservatives are dropping their principles- meaning why should we give the left free speech or services from private companies when they deny that to the right. We want revenge. We want AG from GOP states to investigate these companies for fraud, theft, or discrimination.
They are no longer a neutral company. Period, and this is war.
Conservatives can no longer expect services from lefty companies.
How about truckers, who are conservative, not deliver food to lefty cities. How will they like that. So now lefty's need to start their own lefty trucker companies so they can get food. It is a private business, go start your own trucking company to get food- how do you like that?
-- Abe Lincoln
- Abe "Mohamez" Lincoln
Do you believe hosting companies should be unable to decline customers? Should Amazon have to host the KKK? The Taliban? Someone who screwed them over by declaring bankruptcy after a big bill?
It just so happens enough people are doing so to create some market pressure. Spotify is simply reacting to that pressure as all businesses do.
Nobody is being silenced.
But seriously, though. He surely knew the stakes when he decided to sign the deal with Spotify, moving from an open podcasting ecosystem to a corporate controlled one.
> So I'm guessing, like a lot of things in the US, private companies are now deciding to figure that part out.
For people who decided to take a giant paycheck from those private companies, yes.
But on a serious note, podcasting was originally just mp3 files freely distributed to be played on ipods. It's anathema to ever have a centralized platform like Spotify hoarding exclusive rights and control.
How does a decentralized registry mean complete government control?
Pressured by small mobs, billionaire's funded groups, political actors...
This is just people reacting and saying what they're doing is probably wrong and goes against their customers interests