Neil Young to Spotify employees: CEO Daniel Ek is ‘your problem, not Joe Rogan’
latimes.com
latimes.com
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/michelle-shock...
I'm not here to defend Joe Rogan or Daniel Ek, just pointing out that it's stupid to get involved in Internet fights between celebrities. Most of it is kayfabe anyway.
IMHO the correct way to deal with free speech you don't like is more free speech.
It's appropriate criticism of Rogan.
Neil gave an ultimatum to Spotify to entirely de-platform Rogan over some conversations he did not like (with credentialed scientists, btw). Whether you agree with his assessment of the conversations or his actions, it certainly doesn't make Neil immune from criticism. Quite the opposite - speaking exposes one to criticism, and that's healthy.
See the difference here? I'm not demanding Neil Young be censored or his content pulled. I disagree with him and can criticize his ludicrous demands for censorship, but I'll also defend his ability to say narrow-minded things. You can criticize me too. That's how open dialogue works, and it's just fine. It's not attacking Neil, you, or me (words are not violence); if anything is attacked, it's ideas only.
The trouble with normalizing censorship is that inevitably one will not be counted on the side of the righteous bandwagon, but on the side of the heretical and trying to speak their truth to power. It will happen in your lifetime, guaranteed.
Everyone can go self-host their audio out of an S3 bucket for a dime.
Or go make a hundred dollars selling an album on Bandcamp to a fraction of the audience.
There are alternatives. And you'll find out how little people will pay just to listen.
A friend of mine is a producer for a big music studio. He said more than 80% of Spotify listeners are completely passive - not even changing tracks or adjusting the volume.
The percentage that actively chooses their music? Less than 2%.
It’s a vanishingly small audience and discoverability is the key feature.
Why should you adjust the volume? What do you mean with changing tracks?
In exchange for discoverability (and hosting) you make half a penny per stream instead of a full penny.
You don't need to leave Spotify to learn that
More importantly, Neil Young has shown himself to be for censorship and against the free exchange of ideas. His stance is fundamentally at odds with free societies that harbor enlightenment values. The problem is not Rogan or Ek, but Young and the new authoritarian pro-censorship/deplatforming political tribes, who abuse their voice and power to silence those who don’t share their ideology. That’s not the stance of reasonable people - that’s the stance of zealots, no different than religious zealots of a different era.
They’ll keep writing the articles for as long as people are going to click them. These are the same outlets that can spin a couple of tweets into a story about a “growing backlash to xyz”. However low you imagine the bar to be, it’s lower.
Get in the game. There a wide limits to what you can opine; it's finite and large and a few things have consequences. Narrow: Spotify kicks Joe off; Joe walks elsewhere. Or legal. Nobody said consequence free.
A dumb pipe doesn't pay to host exclusive content.
Joe Rogan is Spotify's business partner, and his reputation will, accordingly, have impact on Spotify's reputation.
Perhaps you don't feel you owe people you disagree with better, but you owe this community better if you're participating in it—much better.
If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
I also didn’t ask that Neil Young be denied his first amendment rights, so you’re attacking a straw man. But I did point out that he is abusing his power (of celebrity) to try and silence political adversaries. Censorship is censorship. It doesn’t matter if it is brought on by the government or individuals with power or masses with collective power.
As for your patronizing tone telling me what to read - I’ve actually read some of those things you listed, for what it’s worth.
Signed, a nitwit.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edit: I took a closer look and saw that you've clearly been using HN primarily for ideological battle. That's not allowed here, regardless of what you're battling for or against—it's in fact the worst thing you can contribute to destroying this place for its intended purpose. Here are links to many past explanations:
https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
Since we've asked you many times to use HN as intended and you've continued not to, I've banned the account.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
This has less to do with politics.
The purpose of this particular manufactured crisis is to take out Joe Rogan, who does not kowtow to the COVID-19 zeitgeist.
> who abuse their voice and power to silence those who don’t share their ideology.
Reminds me of the quote, 'First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win' [0]. This is the 'fight you' phase of Humanity's rebellion against the charlatans (you used zealot [1], but I think charlatan [2] is more appropriate).
Two tweets about the attempted cancellation of Joe Rogan:
"This is a professional political attack. Three waves one right after the other is not a coincidence. Good spacing, good timing, so it's absolutely professional." - https://twitter.com/wokal_distance/status/149022042327069900... (thread ties the Rogan hatcheting to a Super PAC)
"This is not organic. It's a political hatchet job" - https://twitter.com/esaagar/status/1490773485056057344 (this one credits @wokal_distance)
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Klein#Address_to_the_...
[1] "Zealot ... means one who is zealous on behalf of God" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zealots
[2] "A charlatan is a trickster or con artist" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlatan_(disambiguation)
"To baby boomers, I say that 70 percent of your country’s financial assets are in your hands compared with just 5 percent for millennials,” he wrote. “You and I need to lead. In our age of Climate Chaos, I say ditch the companies contributing to the mass fossil fuel destruction of Earth.
He's trying to make it seem like he, as a rich and influential person his entire adult life through the back half of the 20th century, is not culpable for the mess that needs mopping. He thinks that saying words now will have people forget his inaction.