All of this surprises me at some level, this cultural tendency toward censorship. It's not even really about whether it's in Spotify, Twitter, YouTube's rights to do it as private companies, it's why do some feel this need to do it at all?

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.