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Comment by jevoten | Hacker News Reader

More insidious than the removal, is how Spotify conceals it. We shouldn't need a 3rd party website - the episode titles should remain in the list, among those not removed, but tagged with a big red CENSORED, along with a specific reason for the removal.

If they want to censor, fine - but don't lie by omission about it.

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Nobody is censored here ... Spotify decided that they don't want to distribute them anymore. Rogan can say what he wants. Even the missing episodes are still on archive.org and other places.

Is a movie/show season is no longer listed on Netflix because of some rights issues also censoring in your opinion?

There are some albums not visible in some countries on Spotify. For the longest time, i could not listen to the metal versions of Ghibli songs in Japan (they are offline, online several times already, potentially due to rights issues): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXB35-cYVMU&list=PLmsGXAySkD...

My spotify playlist was suddenly empty /filled again.

Is that censorship?

As a result, I payed for the albums and canceled my spotify account.

Edit: clarity + totoro example

There is no sharp line between censorship, curation, and mere omission for unrelated reasons (e.g. limited shelf space, or unawareness by the curator that a work even exists). But this example falls close enough to the censorship side that it can be called as such. Because if this doesn't qualify, then it would take a literal government ban to count as censorship, which is a uselessly narrow criterion in our corporate-dominated society.

Edit: To elaborate: To suppress a work, government censorship is simply not necessary. If Amazon refuses to list it, Youtube removes it and Google downranks it, Spotify and Netflix drop it, or Twitter or Facebook ban it, then it'll reach 1% or less of its audience than if it were treated generically (ironically this doesn't apply so much to Joe Rogan, since he already has an established audience. But it does for less known creators).

Notice I've only listed 6 companies.

It's always been like for platforms before the internet, no? I couldn't just publish whatever I wanted in print, there was always curation and editing. I couldn't spread whatever words I wanted on NYT, I'd have to write and publish on my own, people are still allowed that, there's no right to use media vehicles to project your voice.

You are correct that nothing illegal happened, no legal rights were violated (except possibly Rogan's contract, which is irrelevant to a discussion about principles). You may even be correct that it has always been like this - yes, media are far more consolidated than in the past*, but new entrants to the media landscape (Google, Twitter, Facebook, etc..), while even more consolidated, don't control their platforms as strictly as traditional media, so it's hard to judge if dissenting speech is more or less suppressed than in the past.

But that doesn't make it not censorship, or morally justify concealing it.

*In 1983, 50 corporations controlled the vast majority of all news media in the U.S. At the time, Ben Bagdikian was called "alarmist" for pointing this out [..] In 2004, Bagdikian's revised and expanded book, The New Media Monopoly, shows that only 5 huge corporations -- Time Warner, Disney, Murdoch's News Corporation, Bertelsmann of Germany, and Viacom (formerly CBS) -- now control most of the media industry in the U.S. General Electric's NBC is a close sixth. - https://www.corporations.org/media/

Just to be clear here -- based on your response, you believe that the NYT refusing to publish your article is censorship?

You want a clear-cut rule that can, without any context or nuance, categorize something as "censorship" or "not censorship"? I'm afraid I don't have one. Is that what it would take before you admit anything other than a government ban is censorship?

To answer your question - if it was my article? No. But suppose I wasn't a random person on the internet, but a journalist, and, after spending a lot of time investigating and writing a story on, lets say, the health risks of bovine growth hormone, my employer makes me go through 83 rewrites over 8 months, then fires me, and never airs the story [1] - is it censorship then?

Or what if I was hired to make a documentary on child abuse, but my employer decided that, "as a responsible broadcaster", they would censor it (sorry, delay publishing until after the election), to not inflame racial tensions [2]?

Can we call either of these "censorship", without also calling the NYT's refusal to publish a random unaffiliated nobody's arbitrary article also "censorship"?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bovine_somatotropin#Lawsuit_ag...

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2004/may/20/channel4.broad...

I agree, but I would limit this reasoning to co,panties that essentially are infrastructure although policy makers refuse to treat them as such ( Google etc).

Spotify imho is not in this category.

The word censorship usually means removed for political reasons, not commercial disputes. It's obvious from the list that these episode removals are targeting very specific kinds of people, in an attempt to prevent people hearing their ideas. It's censorship by Spotify and it's disgusting and immoral - a complete failure to learn the lessons of the past.

There are a lot of politically questionable JRE episodes still up and available. So hard to blame the takedown solely on politics ...

Here's a take down from the decoding the guru's podcast about some of those ideas you mentioned:

https://decoding-the-gurus.captivate.fm/episode/robert-malon...

https://decoding-the-gurus.captivate.fm/episode/patreon-prev...

Decoding the gurus should get 100 Million Dollars and a deal from Spotify in my opinion.

> Nobody is censored here

How do you know? This is about Spotify's intentions, do you know them? Do they follow orders from, or are they pressured by gov't(s)?

And what about the eps that were removed, do they show a pattern as to what could by Spotify reasons for removing them?

Why are their intentions important at all? Can you show they follow some government orders?

If Spotify censors Joe Rogan's speech, it would mean they suppress or prohibit him to speak about a particular topic /content etc. They made a couple of episodes unavailable on their service (that happens all the time with other content as well, and Spotify didn't even touch the recent ones dealing with COVID). I cannot see how this constitutes to censorship.

Which ideas/concepts are censored in the episodes taken down?

Also, the episodes and clips are still available if you search for them, and Joe Rogan can say anything he wants on other channels ... Or did I miss something?

What other platform does something like this? The closest thing I could think of is how Google will have a message at the bottom warning that some results were removed due to DMCA violations

Yeah, definitely a user-hostile experience. You can see this dark pattern everywhere. Amazon hides items that are out of stock by default, which is especially annoying if you attempt grocery shopping on Amazon Fresh.

If I can boil it down to a UX maxim, it would go something like, "The absence of a positive is no substitute for a negative".

Probably because most people actually don't give a shit and that it would be really user hostile to list a lot of content that actually don't exist (on the platform).

If you cant play it then don't bloat up the GUI with it, it's as simple as that.

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