Hacker News Reader

Comment by xyzzy_plugh | Hacker News Reader

> They can do whatever the fuck they want.

If that's your framing, you should also grant that we can also protest whatever the fuck we want. This is a trite and unfruitful line of argument.

Forgive me but what are you protesting exactly? You are certainly free to do whatever you want, I'm not the thought police.

But maybe take a second, step back, and think about what you are outraged about... A private enterprise retracting publication of their IP.

Outrageous! Imagine if TV shows or movies were removed from Netflix! Or if someone bought Vine and shut it down. Or if part of a Wikipedia page were ever edited.

At some point you have to look in the mirror.

> Forgive me but what are you protesting exactly?

Corporate censorship. [1]

> At some point you have to look in the mirror.

I don't appreciate your personal attack. You are not arguing in good faith, and I'm done responding to you.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_censorship

Nothing was intended as a personal attack. I just don't understand the outrage.

And how is this corporate censorship? There exists a private contract between two parties, money changed hands. I have no evidence that Spotify is overstepping their bounds here. They can remove any content any time. It's not an open platform. To even get content on their you have to form a contract with a distributor, who I imagine is under no obligation to actually distribute anything.

> money changed hands

irrelevant

> They can remove any content any time.

agreed

> It's not an open platform.

also agreed

That doesn't change that this is a form of censorship. They have a legal right to do so but that doesn't change what it is.

Note that censorship doesn't have to be globally complete in order to qualify as such. If I kick guests out of my house for discussing certain topics that's an act of censorship. Possibly a well justified one depending on the scenario.

They can, but when it was signed, the promise was they wouldn't. Of course, words are wind, and we're witnessing the proof of it right now.

Can you find a citation for the $100 million dollar number? It does not seem to have been disclosed publicly by either party.

It's at least $100 million: https://www.wsj.com/articles/spotify-strikes-exclusive-podca...

Or it might all be bullshit? That would somehow be perfectly fitting.

“according to a person familiar with the matter” has 0 credibility

Honestly though, why not start your own site if you’ve been deplatformed? It’s never been easier or cheaper to do.

The only roadblock is DDOS protection since Cloudflare has shown an equal propensity for censorship.

That's a pretty easy roadblock. Cloudflare's removed two sites, I think?

What about payments? And web hosting? And so many other things?

It’s never been easier to start a site, yes, but it’s also never been more obvious that the providers that make it that easy aren’t interested in neutrality.

Every major cloud hosting platform is censoring now (remember Parler?). Same with every major payment service. So it's not as easy as it seems.

For sure but he’s certainly got the cash to buy the equipment himself.

We always say on here that cloud hosting only works until your business grows to a certain size. It seems like Rogan has hit that size.

I wonder how far technological independence can take you. There are still plenty of ways to cut you off from the infrastructure: your banks, your payment providers, your datacenter providers, etc. In theory, "they" can come after any company that your business depends on and that can be vulnerable to "cancel culture". It's now easy to make you so toxic nobody will want to take the risk of associating with you.

They could but it just feels wrong to take down stuff because of mob chasing after them. Soon, we will be silencing political opponents, critics, contrarians, etc. the entire fabric of society falls apart when mobs fight like this. There needs to be stern principles of free speech, in colloquial and philosophical sense [1], that keeps the wheels greased and keeps the fabric intact. Honestly, we are heading towards a society akin to CCP in China except instead of Governments censoring directly, we have a proxy of Big Tech/Corp doing it for them.

Besides, Joe Rogan, there are far too many crackpot books on Amazon. We shouldn't take them down.

[1] I am well aware of the legal definition of Free Speech. But most people in our society argue with the philosophical position.

8chan is maximal free speech. We live in a post-truth society. This is the fruit of society saying enough with the lies.

No, it's not representative of how free speech would look like. "The coven of the witches" problem arises in part because of all the witch-hunting going on.

Don't confuse a dozen of loudmouths on twitter with the society. We have people all over the media, the government, the Supreme Court, the academia - everywhere - lying to our faces every day. But somehow Rogan - who just lets people of any point of view to come and speak, without censoring - is the biggest problem the society has. What a load of BS.

That's how it begins. "Enough with the lies" or we will crush you.

Pretty sure the contract doesn’t let Spotify do whatever the fuck they want.

Can you share your copy of the contract? You seem to know all the terms and conditions.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com