I don't know if this is some 4D chess move from Spotify, but I actually had to take a look at the two "antivax" episodes and neither had antivax message. So either this is all very clever marketing from Spotify or people try to make Rogan look bad for whatever reason and they don't realize that if you out right lie about things that are easy to verify it makes everything else you push less credible.
For example I can say right now if you are under 30 and your only option is to get Moderna don't take it. Wait until you can get something else. Risks/reward doesn't make sense, but as a result you should keep isolating until you have your double shot.
From [0]:
> They found that, during the first 12 months of the pandemic, males aged 12 to 17 were most likely to develop myocarditis within three months of catching covid-19, at a rate of about 450 cases per million infections.
> This compares with 67 cases of myocarditis per million males of the same age following their second dose of a Pfizer/BioNTech or Moderna vaccine, according to figures from the US Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. Researchers added together cases after first and second doses to reach a total rate of 77 cases per million in this male age group triggered by vaccination, a sixth that seen after infection.
That's about ~7 times likelier from covid than vaccines. No data specifically on omicron (yet) though.
[0] https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg25133462-800-myocardi...
And if you are curious you can search for Moderna in under 30 year old men.
I’m 27 and have my jabs, and suggest others get theirs too, but I totally understand this perspective. In fact you couldn’t even get your vaccines in the UK last April at 21.
https://www.businessinsider.com/delta-variant-made-herd-immu...
None of which addresses the claim in OP that people calling Joe Rogan "anti-vaxx" are "outright lying".
It is anti-vaccine to encourage young people not to get vaccinated. Simple as that.
SARS-CoV-2 causes much higher rates of myocarditis in kids than the vaccines do:
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7035e5.htm
Kids should still get vaccinated. They are at low risk from SARS-CoV-2, but risk of the vaccines are still even lower.
But Rogan appears to be under a coordinated attack from media institutions and governments: horse dewormer, misinformation, racism — all of which is a little absurd.
If someone is really offended or disagree with what he's broadcasting, then why do you think that removing him would be low on any rational list? His podcast reaches 11 million listeners, so getting him off the air seems like it would be pretty impactful.
Spotify removes him.
He goes to YouTube or something.
His fans go there.
Zero tangible impact.
This can actually go far worse - after the Trump subreddits got taken down they moved to another domain which is a clone of Reddit but only about Trump and now you have a smaller echo chamber with the same people attending but less counter-information or moderation. So it’s possible that you can make things worse this way too.
It could make an impact if he was banned from Spotify and then quit podcasts entirely, but that’s not likely because it’s so popular.
All the time we discuss this we aren’t addressing truly horrific issues like Chinese persecution of Muslim minorities or the mobilization of troops in Ukraine or other things that people will actually remember in a few months or the UK government doing all sorts of interesting things.
But will they all follow him there? If 10% of his fans don't, then he's talking to a million fewer people than he used to. And, of course, if he says the same thing on Youtube, they'll start the same campaign to drop him from there too, until all that's left are niche providers where it's harder for people to find him.
Like you, I don't agree that he's said anything so bad that he deserves to be kicked off spotify or any platform, but if someone is passionate about it, doing so would reduce his reach, at least temporarily.
Him moving to Youtube or somewhere that isn't paywalled likely increases his availability to those who aren't willing to pay to listen to him
Is that really a failure? I imagine that cuts out a whole bunch of people who like the convenience of Reddit, or would only have found the subreddit from the front page. And it probably fractures communities, since more than one Reddit clone gets put up to replace a banned subreddit.
> All the time we discuss this we aren’t addressing truly horrific issues
Not everyone needs to be focusing on the most important issues.
Another option could be to release a statement like: "We understand your concern, however we are pursuing what we believe to be a greater good, etc. To help you avoid content you don't like, we will improve our labeling."
I don't think they should. Let's be honest; this is corporate America. It's not about "principles", it's about money. If Spotify thinks that long-term hosting Joe Rogan is going to cost them more money, they're going to get rid of it.
[1] Do not look either of these things up. They are both outright white supremacist propaganda. You have been warned.
I'm not saying Spotify should do anything. I'm saying it has other ways to 'do something' about these kinds of things.
In the general case, I think it's bad that the socially expected thing at the moment is to be angry at {something}. It is both bad for peoples mental health and in general and it detracts from more serious issues in the world.
Take for example the situation in Ukraine. Wouldn't it be more effective to be vocal to our politicians to say we don't want to start some catastrophic war there than to try and force a tech company to remove a podcast host? If Joe Rogan isn't removed, will people even remember this discussion in three months? Probably not, because by that time {someone} will have said {something} and everyone will be tweeting angry thoughts at them instead.
I don't have the impression that any politician (in the west) wants to do that.
Just to play with this a bit. Joe Rogan is unvaccinated himself, and he at least has recommended young people not to get vaccinated.
In the meantime ICU beds are/have been occupied by overwhelmingly unvaccinated people (proportionally) pushing out other urgent medical care, all over the world.
I agree that we can't blame everything on something/someone specific, but JRE is the biggest podcast on the planet, so I think it's fair to say he's probably one major source (among others).
I was trying to say that, using the parent comment's framework, even if it was the {popular thing to hate of the month} (which it isn't), if it is sufficiently bad, something should be done about it regardless.
Like paying musicians reasonable amounts of money per stream? People have been complaining about this since the very beginning of Spotify. But as usual woke nonsense takes up all the air in the room because it's fiscally irrelevant.
People are still sitting at home? That is not my experience even a little bit.
In a company I work for not a single person came back to our local office, in fact, many people decided to move further away from the city and we said publicly that forced coming back to the office will mean changing jobs for us. That's coming from ~150 developers and testers. Even my neighbour who works in a call centre works 4 of 5 days from home... Like is anyone coming back to your fancy cubicles or dirty openspaces?
More importantly it’s those areas where there is a time critical aspect to the misinformation or disinformation. Something that makes the idea of “hearing all opinions” not viable.
Things that come to mind include “polls won’t open until tomorrow” (on Election Day). Or, in this case, medical information.
A better standard is whether the communication rises to criminal offense or civil matter that caused harm (e.g. voter/election fraud, some sort of willful disregard/negligence). In other words, there's a standard/mechanism for redress already (there's an app for that).
If opinion doesn't violate a law or expose someone to a likely successful civil suit, you should be free to express it. Hard for me to imagine scenarios where this doesn't satisfy requirements. If you're concerned about timeliness, keep in mind that censorship doesn't happen quickly enough to stop the election fraud example you gave, unless you are advocating a 'ministry of information' scenario where conversations need to pre-approval to be aired - I would assume you would not advocate for such a thing, in principle.
Absolutely. I don’t think we are arguing freedom of speech here.
> If you're concerned about timeliness, keep in mind that censorship doesn't happen quickly enough to stop the election fraud example you gave
Is the fact that it’s futile a good reason to say that obvious fraud should not be removed on sight?
> A better standard is whether the communication rises to criminal offense or civil matter that caused harm (e.g. voter/election fraud, some sort of willful disregard/negligence). In other words, there's a standard/mechanism for redress already (there's an app for that).
That’s the bar for the law. Obviously the bar for anyone such as a broadcaster can be set at that point or lower. A company has to follow the law obviously but here the question is probably what to employees, prospective employees, customers, investors etc feel. The company adds up the numbers and decides who to include in their platform. Because it’s important to keep in mind that companies promote a select few voices on a platform. They don’t censor away an uncomfortable voice. They chose not to be the megaphone.
I’m not sure what the alternative is to the situation we are seeing? Forcing platforms to give everyone a voice?
There will always be arbitrary moderation and association in free media. Because it’s part of what free media is. We can’t have a free press without self-censorship.
"Free speech" is being progressively constrained to prevent "offense" and attacked with the murky dog whistle of "misinformation" or disloyalty (most commonly Russian agency), causing a national debate in the process.
> should not be removed on sight?
I just meant that 'on sight' is often too late to be any more effective than legal action for the Election Day example you gave. The prospective "damage" we risk in most cases that we hear stories about today is highly debatable (next point).
> Alternative to the situation we're seeing
We would need to agree on the situation "we" are seeing before focusing too much on solutions. I see outsized and misplaced risk intolerance. Indeed, intolerance for open dialogue and skeptical challenge generally if it contrasts with the government/institutional positions. The rapidity with which (ex-CIA now state department) spokesman Ned Price started accusing AP reporter Matt Lee of disloyalty a few days ago is pretty shocking and gross. But that's our reality right now.
> We can't have a free press without self-censorship
I think I very much disagree with this, but may not be understanding the statement. When you say "self" censorship, does that mean you and I showing restraint (systemically unreliable), or (industry collaboration with) a centralized institution (as in the royal "We") which would not be 'self-censorship' by definition? I think you can have free press without institutional censorship as long as we aren't speaking in complete absolutes and are acknowledging a place for the rule of law. Why? We've been modeling it pretty well for a while, and while everyone imagines the times they are living in are unprecedented, this country has faced far worse crises and managed to hold on to some bedrock principles unique to its model of government (delegated powers and inalienable rights of the people). What's really changed that requires a new call for censorship? I know of a few reporters making the case that we can never compete with China unless we become effectively more 'totalitarian' ourselves. I dismiss the reasoning out of hand entirely. I've heard some other reasons revolving around danger and offense but very wooly and inarticulate definitions/constraints that makes me think risk outweighs reward by a large margin.
I mean that a publisher, as a corporate entity will do what it needs to operate as a business and that might mean, for example, choosing to not to do business with people/companies/countries/whatever that might have any form of negative impact on the business but isn't illegal.
> I think you can have free press without institutional censorship
Not sure what institution you refer to here.
> this country
Not sure which country you refer to here. Spotify is a Swedish but global company, Rogan is from New Jersey... This story is pretty universal I think.
> What's really changed that requires a new call for censorship?
I'm not "calling" for censorship. I'm just stating the obvious: that companies and people doing self-censorship isn't something you can be for or against, "call for", protest against, or ban. You can argue that it's unfortunate when the "landscape of acceptable opinions" shrinks. This is a pendulum that will always, and has always, swung both ways (And is very different between different countries of course).
> intolerance for open dialogue and skeptical challenge generally if it contrasts with the government/institutional positions
Whenever something even gets near authorities and public instutitutions, we are in a whole different area. That's where actual free speech comes into play. The limit set by authorities on what you can and cannot say. The topic at hand here though is only when a privately owned company chooses to not do business with another company or person.
I think there's a gray area: minority scientific position that's being hyped by a faction for political reasons (e.g. a faction that's cherry picking outlier studies for the sole reason that they support their pre-existing policy preferences).
Now some might argue that "both sides" do that, and to a degree they might be right. However, I think there's another heuristic that helps avoid paralysis due to that: if both sides aren't trying to solve the problem in good faith, pick the one that is, and reject the one that's just reacting against proposed solutions.
Joe Rogan is primarily being attacked for bringing in Dr. Peter McCallaugh. Name one thing that he has said that is "misinformation".
Find out if/why the experts are justified to hold their respective opinion, evaluate the facts and come to a conclusion. Just because someone says something does not make it true. Regardless if that person is an expert or not.
It's obviously a slippery slope approaching censorship this way.
Mis/disinformation should not be conceived of as skeptical questioning that may lead to dumb people making bad choices. That's a level of second-guessing and faux-benign concern that cannot guide policies of censorship. Skeptical questioning, dialog, and debate is more beneficial for society than it is dangerous to dumb people (who are high-risk even without overhearing the speculative conversations of others). There is some level of acceptable risk, whether it's vehicular traffic, or allowing people to speak their mind.
Think about the societal product of ten years living where skepticism of government is effectively outlawed vs a government routinely subjected to open skepticism. I think the latter is a stronger society.