I don't really understand why anyone who claims to be a proponent of a free market economy has an issue with a private corporation deciding what type of content they want to broadcast.
JR sold his catalog of intellectual property (podcast episodes) of his own free will and was paid very well for it: about $100M from what I can gather. What Spotify chooses to do with it is completely up to them, even if they bought it with the express intention of "burning" it all, i.e. never broadcasting it, that would still not be censorship. That would be nothing but exercising their intellectual property rights, that they paid for, just like buying the rights to a song that you hate to stop that specific recording from ever being played again is within your right, or even negotiating with the artist to never play it again.
He signed a "multi-year" exclusive deal (the details are fuzzy, for obvious reasons) which means he sold his trademark and time for money, which is how the market works.
Exactly what he sold (NDA, limitations on his speech in his free time etc.) we'll probably never know, but whoever calls this "censorship" needs a reality check. There exists plenty of proper censorship in the world if you look for it, and this isn't it.
> I don't really understand why anyone who claims to be a proponent of a free market economy has an issue with a private corporation deciding what type of content they want to broadcast.
I don't think this is some irreconcilable gotcha. I support the free market as a tool when it delivers on the benefits that it can provide. Those are increasing choice and decreasing costs through increased competition and commoditization. If problems show up I'm happy to have legislation introduced to tackle those, such as not allowing food with known toxins to be sold.
It's like any tool. I support cars when they're used to deliver on the benefits that they can provide; getting people from point A to point B, and giving them the freedom to move between arbitrary locations. When they're used to run pedestrians over then I don't support that usage, and I will support legislation that limits the use of the tool in that manner.
Likewise if the free market is used as a way to reduce the availability of content, I can be against that while still supporting it as a guiding concept.
> Likewise if the free market is used as a way to reduce the availability of content, I can be against that while still supporting it as a guiding concept.
Joe Rogan being on Spotify is entirely about limiting the availability of his podcast. They're paying him to not make his episodes available outside of Spotify.
For all the talk he gives, it was ultimately a matter of money for him. I respect JR for being genuinely curious about vast number of topics and asking right questions, but he of all people should have known that limiting access to his podcasts will hurt his reputation.
Not necessarily. He could have seen the writing on the wall with Google/YouTube and wanted a platform where he would not be censored ... and may have miscalculated.
I agree. He's said similar things before on his podcast, and I have little reason to not believe him.
People seem to forget that he had an ownership stake in the UFC, which sold for over 4 billion dollars. Also, an ownership stake in Onnit (cofounder), which sold for untold millions to Unilever. $100MM is a lot of money, but he was very, very wealthy before that deal. It's not like he was scraping by on Ramen noodles before Spotify came along.
I disagree. Anoyone that say any decision was only about one thing (in this case, money) doesn’t have a very nuanced view of the world.
It could be about fear (of being back at a place where he wanted food)
It could be about legacy (he wants to give the money to children, family, whatever)
It could be about money (I will have felt I’ve made it when I have a Yacht)…but he seems to be a smarter person than that.
It could be about not ever having to work doing anything he doesn’t want to ever again.
It could be about distributing is thoughts as far and wide as he can.
but just saying it was ‘ultimately a matter of money’ is a non-statement.
Why are you against people freely negotiating deals even if those deals result in reducing availability of content? Does the govt really need to be involved in this?
Consenting to an immoral deal doesn’t make it moral.
As for whether or not reducing the availability of information is immoral, that obviously depends on what the information in question is. I’m unfamiliar with Joe Rogan’s work so I have no opinion on this particular case.
Edit: Based on the replies I wasn’t sufficiently clear. I don’t believe the Rogan deal is immoral because I have no belief about it’s morality or lack thereof at all. If you insist on a moral judgment that I feel ill-informed to make, then I’ll speculate that the deal probably was moral.
How is it immoral? He was paid a significant sum for it. IP is all about limiting information in exchange for money (generally).
I'm all in favour of reducing copyright power/length, but outside of mandatory licensing there are very few circumstances where locking IP up would be outside the scope.
Even if it was an immoral deal (I'm not convinced), we're not talking about someone who was coerced into a deal due to predatory practices or an exploitative power imbalance.
Rogan wanted to give control over his catalog in exchange for heaping gobs of money. He didn't have to do this if he didn't want to (he was already independently wealthy), but he did want to, so he did it, and was not harmed in any way.
>...Likewise if the free market is used as a way to reduce the availability of content,
That's literally the whole premise of things like copyright and patents. You can't just run out and start distributing NFL streams, copies of movies, or Disney labeled memorabilia without the expressed permission of the people who own that content.
Which are arguably a government-imposed regulatory capture whose disfunction causes the market to be less free. So, it sounds like the two of you kind of agree?
> I support the free market as a tool when it delivers on the benefits that it can provide... If problems show up I'm happy to have legislation introduced to tackle those
Then that's not the "free market" that you support, just "markets."
That's a silly statement and likely purposely obtuse. Practically any reasonable person talking about a free market does not typically mean a market with precisely zero laws governing it.
Then it’s a good opportunity to either officially set the new definition of “free market”, or stop using it altogether. “When we say X we all really mean Y” actually works against us long-term because there are plenty of people who don’t know that and some of those are the ones making the laws.
Language is organic, words and phrases take their meaning based on a social consensus derived from how they're routinely used, not because some person or group bestows a meaning from on high. The whole “When we say X we all really mean Y” is how practically all language works. When I say, "I'm so hungry I could eat a horse", no one in their right mind actually thinks that I could or would eat an entire horse, instead, everyone will correctly take the phrase to mean that I am very hungry.
Agreed yes, and I regularly argue that by pointing people to the definition of 'literally'.
To clarify my argument, I mean for those reading this post to either push for that change in the dictionary (the usual way: by being more clear on their definition when sing it and encouraging others to use their definition and do the same), or to stop muddying the waters (and possibly use an updated term).
Similarly, free markets are markets that have sufficient safeguards to keep the market free, not markets that are free from legislation. From the oracle[0]:
In a free market, the laws and forces of supply and demand are free from any intervention by a government or other authority, and from all forms of economic privilege, monopolies and artificial scarcities
From this simple snippet, we can conclude three things:
- government and other authorities are only limited to not interfere with supply and demand; enforcing product standards does not make a market non-free
- good anti-monopoly legislation is an example of the government working towards the free market, not against it
- Anything involving copyright and patents is by definition not a free market
I’d agree with all of that, though I’m squeamish on the very last one. I think copyrights are too long and there are pretty big problems in the patent system, but IP protection does have similar benefits to enforcing product standards.
Essentially IP protection is encouraging creation and innovation by preventing someone who didn’t do the work from simply stealing it and profiting without paying the creator. This is certainly over-simplified, but one way of viewing IP protections is that it’s trying to balance multiple freedoms, and that a free market with no regulation at all is not actually free for everyone. Having no protections on product standards is a loss of freedom for consumers. Having no protections on intellectual property is a loss of freedom for creators (and, the thinking goes, would be a net drain on the economy).
Here are some hastily googled arguments in favor of viewing IP protection as part of a free market:
> That would imply the existence of legal “black markets”.
Why’s that? I don’t follow. How does black markets being defined as illegal imply there are legal ones?
BTW, don’t take my word for it, just look it up.
“A black market, underground economy or shadow economy is a clandestine market or series of transactions that has some aspect of illegality or is characterized by some form of noncompliant behavior with an institutional set of rules. If the rule defines the set of goods and services whose production and distribution is prohibited by law, non-compliance with the rule constitutes a black market trade since the transaction itself is illegal.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_market
> Black markets are markets that break existing legislation, not markets that are free from legislation.
Your statement "black markets are not markets without legislation" logically implies such existence. I regard legislation as a governmental act and in my opinion you stretched its meaning to an informal agreement between market participants.
But, if you meant legislation as some kind of unwritten law, that breaks state laws, i would fully agree.
You misquoted me there. My “not” wasn’t defining the term it was doing the opposite, saying the definition is not what you claimed at the top. “Black market” is not a common term for markets without legislation, contrary to what you said. The term for markets without legislation, or for many people, with light or restricted legislation is “free market”, just like @aqme28 was talking about.
So are you saying that you’re against exclusive licenses, even in theory? Say Spotify had signed the same deal with Joe Rogan but not removed any episodes from their own service — still bad?
As a legal matter, no, though copyright terms should be shorter.
As a civil society matter, I think we should agree that making a secret album so that it ends up in the hands of a hedge fund criminal is uncool. It’s appropriate and even good for us to say that while that’s something allowed by the rules, we accord it no honor.
The tech didn’t exist at the time, but honestly wouldn’t it be better for the world if Wu-Tang had issued a single exclusive NFT of the album, and then made the actual music freely available?
I mean maybe not, maybe the songs actually suck, but I would certainly like to hear them.
Who are we to dictate how artists distribute their art? If an artist wants to make their art limited even though technology exists to easily distribute it, we cannot make the choice for the artist.
Often artists like to make a statement with their art, and how an artwork is received is often as much a part of the statement as the artwork it self (think Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain). Wu-Tang Clan wanted to make a statement with their art and they did, quite successfully to be honest.
Who are artists to dictate what we do with information that we posess. If someone wants to make additional copies which takes effectively zero effort, the artis cannot make the choice for us.
Often people incorporate art into their culture, and what the original artist intended with the artwork is only a small part of what it becomes. Society thrives by sharing art and has done so long before copyright existed, quite successfully to be honest.
I don’t think this was this simple. This might be true of folk artists (and it still is), but a lot of artists were sponsored either by the religious institution or by patronage. I personally favor state sponsored artists and I do think that our taxes should go into supporting artists way more then they currently do.
However as it stands our current economy does mandate that artists make a living for them self, and while we still live in a world of 40 hour per week minimum wage where most people have little energy and time to work on art/hobby in spare time, artists selling their art with artificial scarcity follows logically.
All that being said, this is not what we were talking about with the Wu-Tang Clan record. Their piece was a unique piece that works as a commentary on how the rest of musicians distribute their art. I look at this more like a fine art piece (or even performance art piece) then music. A lot of fine artists incorporate music with their art pieces and nobody expects them to distribute it digitally (though many do). This is kind of like the reverse of that.
Finally, by allowing our artists this freedom of distribution, we get nice things, including a diverse and healthy art world.
> However as it stands our current economy does mandate that artists make a living for them self
It does not mandate that they need to make their living from a particular business model. You already mentioned patronage as a method of funding for art - crowdfunding is one natural extension of that. Performance also does not rely on artifical scarcity. Demand for new art does not rely on artificial scarcity. There is also nothing saying that artists need to make their living from their art - and in fact this is not something most artists can do even with society being burdened with artificial scarcity.
> and while we still live in a world of 40 hour per week minimum wage where most people have little energy and time to work on art/hobby in spare time
I don't think the 40 hour work week is something that should be reinforced in any way at all. If society can have people working full-time on art then there is no real need to keep this outdated model where everyone needs to dedicate a majority of their waking time to survival.
> artists selling their art with artificial scarcity follows logically.
An economy built around articial scarcity reinforces a need for artificial scarcity? Maybe, but not an argument for anything.
> All that being said, this is not what we were talking about with the Wu-Tang Clan record. Their piece was a unique piece that works as a commentary on how the rest of musicians distribute their art. I look at this more like a fine art piece (or even performance art piece) then music. A lot of fine artists incorporate music with their art pieces and nobody expects them to distribute it digitally (though many do). This is kind of like the reverse of that.
I have nothing against an artist only distributing their work to a single person if they want to do that for whatever reason - but I don't think that society should then help them in any way in ensuring that that art stays with only that recipient once it leaves their hands.
> Finally, by allowing our artists this freedom of distribution, we get nice things, including a diverse and healthy art world.
Hahaha no. We get art that is optimized for profitability which tends to work against diversity while almost all transformative creative endeavours are prevented - except when copyright is ignored, as it is with most UGC, game mods mods, youtube videos etc. where it is mostly the platforms profiting off that art and not the artists.
I actually agree with you. Liberating people out of our current economic paradigm is probably the best thing we can do for the art world, as it frees people to work on their own stuff (including art) in their free time without any need for compensation.
if Wu-Tang had issued a single exclusive NFT of the album, and then made the actual music freely available?
I think that is probably not what Skreli wanted. The entire point seemed to be that no one else would get to hear the music. Otherwise, there's really not much difference between a single person owning the NFT or the gold master with the mp3 being freely distributed.
> Likewise if the free market is used as a way to reduce the availability of content, I can be against that while still supporting it as a guiding concept.
Are you against the concept of intellectual property as a whole?
In this case your argument has great supporting points as this is driven by blackstone&blackrock capital funds using their assets, music and stock, to do culture war to force Spotify to suppress viewpoints these fund managers find inconvenient for their agenda. That’s not free market.
These funds subscribe to and push a China style system in the USA, as evidenced by their leading role in pushing ESG. There is little good about this abuse of what’s mostly either pension fund money or fed stimulus money.
Blackstone through its Hipnosis subsidiary has spend tons of capital to buy up 50% of Neil Young and much of other music, books and audio book rights
Blackrock&blackstone are using pension and federal stimulus money to push censorship of people opposing their agenda. Not their own money. They are also pushing a new non-free-market system change, ESG, using other peoples or fed money.
Both the way they get they money they bully with and what they push is therefore anti free market.
Do you? A 'free market' where governments can and do supply unlimited amounts interest-free money to a hand full of investors and big companies is not a free market at all. Not to mentioned big business in our 'free market' is constantly lobbying for all kinds of government control and protectionism and vice versa.
In this system anything can be bought by those who control the money supply by inflating all assets, meaning you can't really own any property. So what we have is neither a free market nor capitalism.
I agree that Spotify has the legal right to stop distributing any content they find objectionable. Anyone arguing that Spotify’s action is a first amendment violation is simply wrong. A private entity, like Spotify, can decide what content to distribute at their own discretion. I don’t think many people are making this argument.
Instead, I think many of us are arguing that Spotify shouldn’t exercise that option just because of an outraged online mob. That includes those of us that aren’t particular fans of Rogan and wouldn’t be affected if we couldn’t consume his content anymore. Many of us are arguing that as a general principal; don’t give in to a short-lived and irrational angry mob.
I am arguing for Spotify and other content distributors to ignore angry mobs because I worry that eventually such a mob will come for something I do value. E.g., I listen to plenty of music that includes gratuitous levels of profanity. I imagine that such music greatly offends many people, chiefly culturally conservative prudes. Should such an online mob form and demand Spotify stop distributing some of my favorite music then I hope Spotify resists that mob.
Maybe one day I’ll even be a member of such a mob demanding that some platform stop distributing something that offends my sensibilities. While my emotions of hate and outrage may cloud my rational judgment, I hope the platform will have the courage to tell me and my compatriots to pound sand. If we don’t like the content, then we don’t have to consume it.
*Edited to fix a mistake as pointed out in a reply.
The difference in me (chiefly culturally conservative prude) and the liberal cancel culture is that I won’t try to silence someone’s choices based on my values. You may listen to whatever you want and I hope you get enjoyment out of it. I support your freedoms and a lot of good men have died to protect them.
The difference between you and the “cancel culture” is that you are a real person who exists, and “cancel culture” is an emergent phenomenon that happens on social media. People complaining about cancel culture is like people complaining about traffic jams. There’s no nefarious person in charge who’s trying to “cancel” things, it’s just lots and lots and lots of people and a tendency to overreact to stuff.
I think we all know what he means. He means the liberal equivalent to the "socially conservative prude". Which certainly does exist.
(Also this is only tangentially related but why is being prude a bad thing? I had a female friend in high school that would get insulted for being too prude. I don't think people really realize the way these concepts get applied in reality. People are allowed to be prude just as they're allowed to be libertines.)
>There’s no nefarious person in charge who’s trying to “cancel” things, it’s just lots and lots and lots of people and a tendency to overreact to stuff.
There isn't? Are there not people calling for someone to be fired/resign because of some action they did?
It’s not the same people every time. People tend to want to out-outrage one another sometimes and it sometimes it leads certain people to call for boycotting/etc, and then sometimes those movements pick up steam as people try to be “early” to a given outrage cycle.
Nobody’s calling the shots here… nobody went and decided “aim the twitter outrage cannon at Joe Rogan, he ran afoul of the Cancel Culture and must atone.” It’s just a phenomenon that happens due to the tendency of humans on social media to amplify outrage rather than ignore it.
Every "liberal media outlet" I've seen tends to just regurgitate opinions they see on Twitter, so I don't really understand what "pushed" means in your context. It seems more like they're amplifying existing outrage than anything.
Do you actually think channels like CNN get their left leaning bias from reading twitter, rather than their owners? And I suppose fox gets its bias from listening to Joe Rogan?
> Do you actually think channels like CNN get their left leaning bias from reading twitter, rather than their owners?
That's not my claim. I'm claiming that if you actually watch CNN, they tend to literally put a camera to a big computer monitor and show you a bunch of people's tweets. I'm not talking about bias/etc here, I'm talking about how they literally feature tweets as part of their news coverage.
Of the typical stories on CNN that one would qualify as "cancel culture", they typically go something like: "<Celebrity A> said a controversial thing on Twitter! Let's take a look at some of the reactions..." etc etc. Their coverage seems to be focused on "what do the people think of X", all the damned time. Yes, this makes CNN quite useless as a news organization.
This is hilarious. Social conservatives invented cancel culture and used their influence to control the media we watched until very recently. Does no one remember the Dixie Chicks being made irrelevant because they critiqued Bush? No what happened is that the population is no longer majority conservative and the tools employed by them are now under the control of social liberals and they (you) can’t stand it.
Nice try though pretending history starts at some arbitrary line you can then use to critique. Conservatives are just getting a taste of their own medicine.
Well, that's a pretty poor example to use to try to make your point. The Dixie Chicks (a country music group with a socially conservative leaning fanbase) went to a foreign country and decided to shit on their president for whatever the early 2000's equivalence of 'woke points' was. Europe was wildly anti-Bush at the time, so I'm sure it played well over there.
Their American fanbase (yanno, the MASSIVE group of people that enabled the Dixie Chicks' success... it sure didn't come from European audiences) turned on them because their values were obviously different and I guess Natalie Maines couldn't grasp that.
I don't have any evidence, but I'm leaning towards thinking that the people calling for Joe Rogan's cancellation aren't his main fanbase. That's the common thread with today's "social liberal" influence on media- people that are complete non-consumers of whatever winds up in the crosshairs just go to fucking war nowadays against whatever they've decided is offensive.
> Just so you know, we're on the good side with y'all. We do not want this war, this violence, and we're ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas.
Not exactly “shitting” on him is it?
Anecdotally, I think joe Rogan has lost a TON of fans over the last few years. There is no better example of this than the joe rogan subreddit. It used to be a place for fans to gather, but now he regularly gets roasted and fairly criticized. And if you’ve actually watched the JRE over the last few years, his podcast has changed SIGNIFICANTLY (for the worse imo). There’s no better example of this than the clip from 2020 that was circulating this week, where he basically calls antivaxxers bozos.
He used to have a kooky, interesting perspective and I appreciated how he would approach topics with an open mind. Even if I didn’t agree with his guests, he’d ask decent questions and confront the egregious shit. He doesn’t do that anymore. His guests are just people that believe the same fringe, unsupported contrarian conspiracies.
It is a poor one, if the guys explanation is right. Joe Rogans fanbase is not turning on him. They understand that he will have guests that not everybody likes. I skip the episodes that I don't find interesting. The pressure is coming from the out side mob that has never listened a episode and going with the sound bites from multi hour episode.
American main stream news distribute fake new very often, but I don't see much uproar about that in the cancel culture circles.
Glenn Greenwald made a good video about. Breaking Points, Kyle Kulinski and Tim Pool has talked about this issue. CNN, MSNBC, etc. can say outright lies and nobody wants them to be cancelled. Instead they are being promoted on Youtube. Does "Horse dewormer" ring a bell or "Russia gate"? Both of them are lies period.
Writing off critics of Rogan as those who’ve never listened to him is dishonest and bad faith debating. I was a big Rogan fan prior to 2017 when his guest pool become predominantly right wing (as did his talking points.)
Cancel culture has been going on since humans lived in societies. It's strange to try to pin it on one political party, as if there was a time when humans didn't try to silence those they considered to spread dangerous ideas
I'm old enough to remember the Dixie Chicks being cancelled by conservertives for daring to question certain foreign policies concerning the middle east. Ofcourse, it wasn't called "Cancel Culture" then, it was good ol' fashioned patriotic boycott to get them off the airwaves.
The use of language in culture wars are fascinating, I really wish I studied deeply enough in the humanities to really grok it. To my laymen eyes, there are a lot of evolving shibboleths[1], and verbal (or mental) gymnastics to variably identify an activity subjectively based on where on the political spectrum the perpetrator (or poor victim). People are really insist the other side is completely unreasonable, and is to blame for engaging in the culture war.
1. e.g. cancel culture, BIPoC, woke-ism, gender pronouns, virtue-signaling, &tc
Joe Rogan is not being censored for his political beliefs. There are many conservative podcasts on Spotify. He is being censored for medical disinformation. If you've listened to JRE over the last 2 years, he regularly (a) disparages the research and conclusions of medical professionals and (b) presents his own anecdotal views as fact. It is not "I think COVID is X", it is "COVID is X". This is neither in the realm of opinion nor in the realm of politics. This is a debate on whose medical authority to trust.
I wish people would have the integrity to speak about the situation honestly.
Discussions with conservatives on issues like this inevitably result in every topic being badly grafted and transposed into a discussion on "left-wing culture". The issue-at-hand is rarely, if ever, the point. Reading conservative commentary on this issue, one would believe that he was banned from Spotify for stating that he believed that small government was preferable to big government. It's completely and utterly fucking disingenuous.
As others have pointed out, this isn't about COVID. That said, the notion that some topics cannot be discussed or cannot be discussed in a certain way is not only wrong, it is outrageous.
Yeah, the original post has no context, I assumed they were deleted due to pressure from Neil Young & co about COVID disinformation.
It appears that they were deleted instead due to his use of racial slurs. Which, I guess, is a "gotcha".
With your regards to your second point, I do not know what you are referencing. This goes back to my earlier point. Are you saying that it's outrageous that Spotify would remove podcasts containing racial slurs? Or have you pushed aside the topic-at-hand to discuss some social issue outside of this topic?
As mentioned none of the episodes were about covid for medical information. I major portion where conversations with other comedians that may have touched on culturally edgy topics. It's like they ran a transcript filter for words like Islam
Agree - 100%. There's guys who are payed money to yap all day --- a lot not totally but a lot --- of the talent they interview not Joe is what brings in the listeners --- and that's fine.
Now,
- venture into messing with kids
- screwing with public health
- racism
and ... what were you going to stand on? the serious respect you plowed being the "in guy" for the last 15 mins of fame talking BS? Nobody cares that much. I don't. You're in decline now or out. There's a built in and pre-understood fungibility to the whole business, which puts a smile on my face.
Whether it's Trump, the I-man, or Howard stern a lot of media people like them b/c the bring in viewers. And they are the first to toss them out when the line is crossed. I think Imus (I-man) of "Imus in the morning" learned that in a direct way. So let's not totally dismiss the platform behind the host even if Spotify is OK here.
Do you mean 'distributing' rather than 'disrupting'? [first line & paragraph].
I'm sure Spotify are under colossal pressure to delete historical perceived heretical 'content' on their platform in order to keep their paying customers calm during an unprecedented era of US anti free A1 speech and hysterical media driven witch hunts.
I also think their long term prospects, as societal fashions change and (I hope) reason prevails, will not be good as they will be associated with a very dark period in history. IBM survived this after WWII but it took a lot of PR and having the media on their side.
Agree that hopefully Spotify can resist calls to stop distributing content that other users find objectionable. As you point out, fashion will change and hopefully it does so in a way that shuns calls for censorship.
Similarly, Spotify can choose to censor speakers if they think people will come back to Spotify/won't leave Spotify as a result of that action. Spotify should definitely censor whatever they need to in the pursuit of maximum profits.
While I agree in principle with this line of thinking, I do worry that this will just lead to platform fragmentation. My thinking is that if Spotify (or any other platform) gives in to one online mob then that will only encourage more future mobs. I imagine that there are numerous podcasts and artists that some group finds objectionable. E.g., I imagine many cultural conservative prudes find music with a lot of profanity to offend their sensibilities. Should Spotify start removing artists if such a mob forms and demands such an action?
The end result is that a content distribution platform will have to curate a specific brand that targets specific consumers and only distributes conforming content. Whereas we currently have a half dozen or so music streaming services that all have roughly the same content, we’ll soon find content fragmented across 20 different platforms; each corresponding to a specific slice of consumer preferences. Many of us will have to subscribe to multiple services to get the content we seek and will not be able to mix content. E.g., many of my current playlists on Spotify would be split across several disjoint streaming platforms.
Instead, I think platforms should never be reactive in calls for dropping content. Instead they should have a general principle of broadly distributing all but the most extreme fringe content. They can regularly update their principles used in determining what content they distribute, but that should never be done as a quick reaction to some mob. Otherwise they’ll constantly be facing a series of outraged customers that want the platform to stop distributing some content that those outraged user’s don’t even consume. And I believe that will only result in platform fragmentation as distributors curate a brand around specific segments of consumers.
I agree with you, but you’re describing a limitation of the free market.
Historically the press has dealt with this problem by taking a “lowest common denominator” approach to morality. Extreme prudishness.
For example, the infamous Hayes Code was intended to help movie producers deal with the fact that almost every American city had (different!) laws on what a movie could show.
I think the "platform fragmentation" argument might hold more water if we weren't discussing a podcast for which Spotify already has exclusive distribution rights.
I hope you know contracts usually have more than one line, include other terms, and may not go to the end of time.
For example, if Spotify stops paying Joe Rogan, they are unlikely to remain exclusive. Another example is that they may not have rights to remove episodes, or refuse to air episodes without loosing exclusivity or paying a penalty.
My point is that we don't know what the other terms are of the contract are.
You’re misunderstanding me. The contract is an exclusive contract. That may not be the case in perpetuity, but either way that contract today creates the “platform fragmentation” OP is talking about about.
> Whereas we currently have a half dozen or so music streaming services that all have roughly the same content, we’ll soon find content fragmented across 20 different platforms; each corresponding to a specific slice of consumer preferences. Many of us will have to subscribe to multiple services to get the content we seek and will not be able to mix content. E.g., many of my current playlists on Spotify would be split across several disjoint streaming platforms.
Where else can you get Joe Rogan's podcast, today?
Nowhere. That's fragmentation. Spotify literally signed the contract explicitly for this reason. So it doesn't make sense to start worrying about different content being available on different platforms now that people are removing their music in protest, rather than two years ago when they made his podcast exclusive in the first place.
Thank you for bearing with me. I guess I misunderstood your initial response. I thought you were arguing that fragmentation couldn't happen because services like Spotify have exclusivity contracts, not that it already happened!
Sure things are fragmented today, but that doesn't mean it cant be much worse. Today, most of the big catalogs have a ton of overlap. Exclusivity isn't the norm. If artists and services start drawing up into political camps, this overlap could significantly decrease.
Of course they are free to do what they want. But if they do something unethical, like removing content for political reasons, I'm also free to criticize them and for example demand a refund if they lured me into a subscription by claiming I would be able to listen to Joe Rogan.
Also, you are making wild assumptions about the contract between Joe Rogan and Spotify. Maybe there's a clause in there that they will not only license his shows, but also make them available to their users? In that case, removing the episodes would be a breach of contract.
It sounds more like you’re angry that someone is refusing to publish on the platform they own something you personally politically associate with?
Which hey, I get. But they are refusing to publish it because they don’t want to be associated with it anymore, and they bought exclusive rights to it from producer, so…
And I don’t see Joe Rogan saying he is in a hurry to return the money Spotify gave him for this exclusive licensing deal either.
The only real way I can think to ‘solve’ that problem would be to make it illegal to do exclusive licensing deals for content.
Which I personally would be behind (it is also at the root of the whole streaming provider wars, among many many others), but has very far reaching consequences intellectual property wise.
What could be done, is to pass a law saying that exclusivity contracts are only enforceable when the content is actually being made available. I doubt there would be any real support for such a law by anyone who matters though.
True, though that could also happen with the right court case. A bunch of right to repair related stuff, ‘right of fair use’, etc. has been won that way.
Intellectual property law has always had an element of ‘society gives you these protections with the idea and understanding that it makes EVERYONE wealthier in the long run’. There is no NATURAL RIGHT (as in, something that will happen unless interfered with) to exclusive anything related to knowledge.
If anything, it requires extraordinary work and legal protections for it to be even a potential thing, and that is becoming more and more the case.
To get that protection from Society (without it just being a naked theft from everyone anyway), there should be some exchange or actual improvement for the rest of society.
Saying that at a minimum if you have exclusive rights to sell or distribute something, you must be selling or distributing it at a rate that allows normal people to access it (there is the tough part - how do you define that!) or you lose exclusivity and anyone can distribute copies for free - seems perfectly fair.
It also encourages archiving and retention of our history, which would be a good sell for overall society I imagine.
Some issues of course with this position (as I was thinking it through).
- this basically means no one has any IP right to stop information being distributed at all. So if someone say writes a book, then is later embarrassed by it, they couldn’t stop people from publishing it. They currently can.
- this means highly valuable IP (source code to your secret search engine backend?) is very difficult to control. It would also probably apply to things like manufacturing howtos, blueprints, etc.
- Even if you say ‘distributed’ means publicly viewed, this probably impacts distributed/licensed software in various ways, and some of these others. If someone is able to open it in a hex editor that is certainly going to count as ‘viewable’. If they can do that without signing an NDA (which would probably be impacted by this too?), or going through a gate and doing it at your secure facility, that probably counts as ‘public’ too.
- so then there is no way to stop someone else from distributing your now deprecated software? Potentially for a fee?
Agree that it's not unethical in any usual sense of the word. "Ill-advised" is how I think of these situations -- likely to produce unintended negative effects down the line.
It's unethical if you believe that people should be free in expressing their opinions. (Yes, I know that freedom of speech in the US constitution concerns the government and not companies, but I'm talking about freedom of speech as a general value. I find it unethical to suppress someone's ability to freely voice their opinions regardless of whether the government or a private entity does it.)
> It's unethical if you believe that people should be free in expressing their opinions.
No it's not, because free speech does not equal the right to be heard.
> I find it unethical to suppress someone's ability to freely voice their opinions
Can you really not come up with a single example of when you feel a group, entity, corporation, whatever has any right to remove a person from their platform or premise because of what they are saying? Really? This is "unethical", categorically?
This is a very common question, and understandably so. It can be surprisingly hard to defend a general principle on ethical grounds. Principles are justified by observed regularities. Good principles do not necessarily lead to correct actions in 100% of circumstances.
The principle of “don’t interfere with the free exchange of ideas” is one such example where it is particularly hard to see the justification. The consequences of speech suppression are usually subtle —- how do you quantify the impact of a conversation that didn't happen? And at the same time, the consequences of allowing hatespeech or misinformation are usually not subtle, but rather immediate and relatively obvious.
I think we’re actually lucky because the Joe Rohan example does contain examples of good justifications. For the past two years, Rogan was openly discussing politically inconvenient inconsistencies, contradictions, and in some cases retroactively apparent lies by the establishment. It is good to know when your leaders are incompetent, when they are lying, or even when they have made a mistake and never taken responsibility for it! It is good that these conversations happened and good that people know this information.
But even if we can see that this is good, it’s still one of those abstract good-for-society things that is hard to quantify and hard to weigh against the consequences of its counterfactual non-existence. It is thus almost impossible to balance against the harms of, for example, supporting vaccine skepticism. But that’s not an argument for suppression, merely an acknowledgement that this is hard to think about clearly.
But it is a fallacy to say: Joe Rogan’s vaccine skepticism is getting people killed, therefor he should be silenced. The reason is that living in the sort of society that would silence Joe Rogan also gets people killed. The deaths are just abstract deaths.
Put it this way: image we get into a war in five years because Rogan and all the other independent voices like him have been successfully soft-pressured into not talking about the downsides, while the mainstream propaganda mouthpieces have been selling the war hard. Thus, we create a concrete terrible outcome because we allowed a culture of speech suppression. Unfortunately, even if that does happen, it will not be obvious that speech suppression led to war, because, again, general principles tend to have more subtle but far-reaching consequences.
There are also well-known edge cases where speech suppression is probably obviously the right thing to do. I personally think that the genome for smallpox should never have been published, because try as I might, I can’t imagine a scenario where the harms of suppressing the specific knowledge outweighs the possible (even likely) consequence of its dispersement. You can have a principle while being cognizant that tradeoffs can be valid.
Again, though, the reason why free expression is weirdly difficult to defend, is that the harms of “bad” free expression are usually immediate and clear, while the harms of speech suppression are abstract and distant.
This is an amazing rationalization that doesn’t seem to answer the question of why private companies are being unethical if they exercise their freedom to choose what they publish. Nor have you established that choice in the private commercial publishing industry amounts to “silencing”. There is a reason that freedom of speech laws in the US do not apply to commercial speech.
> The deaths are just abstract deaths.
False. At least 5.7 million actual people have died from Covid. Probably many more. Your counter is abstract and somewhat straw man, while the pandemic is a fairly specific and real public health crisis that more or less all public health experts agree requires active management.
You’ve misunderstood and somehow taken me to be saying the inverse of what I actually wrote, so thoroughly that it is difficult to see how you could be making a good faith criticism, though it is always possible that I just wrote my post very poorly. What I said was that the deaths caused by speech suppression are abstract while the deaths caused by speech acts can be very clear and obvious. Because the harms of speech suppression are hard to see, it is harder to argue against speech suppression. In this case the speech acts related to vaccine denialism can be clearly argued to have resulted in deaths, while it is harder to argue for the danger of deaths and other harms caused indirectly by speech suppression.
Though now that I think on it, there was suppression of anti-Iraq-war speech in the early 2000s. Maybe if those perspectives had been more widely heard, that war wouldn’t have happened.
In any case, what you do in your last paragraph is merely an example of the thing I’m talking about. Misunderstanding someone’s argument and calling that misunderstanding a strawman is itself a strawman. 5.7 million deaths on one side of the ledger, okay. Well, the establishment was wrong about masking early in the pandemic, so how many more lives would have been lost if pro-masking voices had been suppressed then?
If I misunderstood, can you elaborate on “it is a fallacy to say: Joe Rogan’s vaccine skepticism is getting people killed, therefore he should be silenced. The reason is that living in the sort of society that would silence Joe Rogan also gets people killed.“?
You seemed to defend and frame Rogan’s speech as if it was part of a beneficial citizenry probing corrupt government officials, and it seems like you downplayed the potential harm of spreading vaccine misinformation as being balanced out by the abstract harm of censorship.
I think that discussing both sides of a cost-benefit calculation will always sound like “downplaying” one side if you happen to think that one side of the calculation is obviously and straightforwardly the weightier. The way a utilitarian would approach this (not my preferred framing but not a bad one here) would be to say “how many deaths did vaccine misinformation cause, in expectation, probabilistically?” which is very hard to estimate, and then “how many deaths would result from the elimination of Enlightenment free speech norms qua norms?” which is even more impossible to even estimate. If we have a nuclear war because anti-war speech is suppressed (again: a thing that has happened historically) and three billion people die then “obviously” speech suppression was more harmful than vaccine misinformation. But this is the kind of thing that will only be obvious when it is too late.
To put it succinctly, you think I’m minimizing the harm of vaccine misinformation, and I suspect you’re minimizing the probable harms of normalizing speech suppression, and maybe we’re both somewhat right about the other.
This feels like a strawman, with an actual political example (going to war) treated the same as measurable scientific rationale. Joe Rogan knows fighting and stirring up his fans with provocative questions, he does not have any qualifications to contribute to peer review. There is nothing political about that.
When the smallpox genome was first published about 30 years ago we didn't have commercial laboratories that could synthesize a virus based on a sequence. So scientists probably didn't anticipate the current risks. At this point it's too late to censor.
Your subscription is churn. Every decision they make has net positive and negative effects in the numbers, but you saying ‘You promised my X but gave me Y’ is table stakes when dealing with subscription umbers as big as spotify has.
They probably did the calculus and determined they’d lose LESS people if they scrubbed the catalog than if they didn’t. It’s not a political statement to them.
You think a doctor saving the life of a white supremacist is the same as publishing content that promotes white supremacy? Huh, I guess that's certainly one way to understand the world
> You think a doctor saving the life of a white supremacist is the same as publishing content that promotes white supremacy?
I do not. That assertion is unrelated to the topic, so Im not sure why you imagined it.
To be clear, I have implied the consequences are equal or, worse, probably multiplicative...in the context of the theoretical consideration you posited.
> It's unethical to publish content that promotes white supremacists
Again, how does this relate to any ethics that applies to Spotify?
I’m the opposite. I paid for Spotify subscription long before Joe Rogan deal, and never listened to any of his podcasts. I learned that they’re controversial after Neil Young was pulled from Spotify. I guess the message was delivered, and I actually considered cancelling my family subscription and switching to something else. I’m happy about their decision, and will remain their customer.
Just so we are clear. You never heard to a single episode, but because woke idiots on twitter said something you considered canceling the service? Like, you were going to cancel because someone said Joe Rogan did something controversial?
Just so we’re clear, I don’t consider neither Neil Young nor hundreds of medical professionals to be idiots. I read the open letter too, and formed an opinion about what kind of podcast is Joe Rogan’s.
So at this point what matters is that Spotify made a deal with Joe Rogan, and thus Spotify is also responsible for whatever he fancies to broadcast.
As the only way to vote in this matter is my wallet, I considered cancelling the subscription. If I did I would also try to convince other people to do the same.
And frankly, Spotify was a better service without podcasts.
Just to be clear. You are ok with child rapist R Kelly and women beater Chris Brown being there, but some guy talking to a doctor/scientist is too much?
Fair enough. So what opinion did you formed on JRE? As someone who listen to bunch of his podcasts before I will be able to say is your opinion accurate.
Ugh... what's worse than the actual censorship are people like you that pretend to not understand the issue, at all.
First of all, WHO ARE YOU ARGUING WITH?!? - "proponent of a free market"? Who are you talking to? Critics of these reactions are not these people, so why on earth are you pretending you want to have a discussion when you deliberately choose to argue with people that have no objection to them? You're talking to an audience of three people, yet everybody that's on your side, the side of censorship will pretend you're refuting the opposing perspective. No, you just picked a tiny group that already agrees with you, pretend it doesn't, and then explain why they actually agree with you.
Ok, so it seems like you're fine with it, because Spotify is a "private corporation", aren't you? Is Spotify free to ban all black artists then? They are a private company after all. Or is that different for reason x / y / z. Fine, let's be a little more theoretical than. Youtube, Spotify and Twitter decide to ban ALL opinions that go against invading Venezuala. Is that something you will support? Private company banning an opinion which they disagree with, all fine and dandy, correct?
Top comment, most upvotes and everyone joins in on this farce... wtf is going on here?
First of all, your tone does not belong on HN. Secondly, you claim that I do not "understand the issue, at all", which is ironic to say the least since you then go on to make the following examples as presumably equal to what is going on with JR:
- Discriminating artists across the board based on ethnicity
- Social networks banning end-users for having an opinion
Neither of these are in any way similar to selling your intellectual property to a third party and them deciding whether or not to air it. If you additionally enter an NDA with this party, voluntarily and through compensation, that is in no way anything like discrimination based on ethnicity, or blanket censorship on social media.
Your agitation does not belong on HN either, yet here it is.
Why are you pretending this is a difficult issue to understand, it very clearly isn't. You're making up random assertions that fit your own predetermined perspective. Everybody that makes money on Youtube or Twitter or Spotify agreed to certain terms. And these terms say they can be deplatformed. So yes, the artist getting displaced based on ethnicity and the anti-war opinion getting banned is exactly the same thing. And it seems you think this is justifiable as long as a spread sheet says it's profitable to do so.
I'm not opening a discussion here, there is nothing to discuss. I'm simply following your own logic to it's conclusion. Your input is not necessary in any of this.
I think to rephrase the parent comment, the issue is that you're making an argument from hipocrisy. You're saying that free-market people should be ok with this but (it sounds like) you also don't subscribe to the free-market view, which means that what you said isn't enough to justify it according to your values.
Maybe it would be different if you said "as a supporter of the free market, I believe that Spotify was correct and in their rights to do this".
Seems pretty obvious OP is addressing a conservative audience that tends to be pro-free-market. For better or worse it is a VERY political topic and this argument attempts identify contradicting agendas of conservatives that take issue with this.
>I don't really understand why anyone who claims to be a proponent of a free market economy has an issue with a private corporation deciding what type of content they want to broadcast.
Perhaps they have other principles too, not just the free market as the be-all end-all.
Not to mention that this isn't the free market operating freely -- it's corporations being told what to do by pressure groups (as opposed to customers of those corporations voting with their wallets, e.g. by not listening to Rogan).
Are you so sure it’s not due to customers voting with their wallets forcing the change? It’s easier than ever to pick up and leave a streaming service.
I downloaded all my playlists from Spotify and will move to any other streaming service I want to (one which has Neil Young—whom I enjoy).
Who are these “pressure groups?” Are they individual musicians and customers? When do individuals morph into these straw men?
I doubt this has anything to do with "customers voting with their wallets".
I suspect it's due to investors realizing the fragility of Spotify's business model - thanks to some (high profile? ish?) artists abandoning them at the drop of the hat - and selling their stocks, resulting in a huge drop in market value. The company has already been steadily and significantly loosing value for the last year, so it probably didn't take much to convince a lot of investors to bail.
The White House responding over a week after Neil Young made his initial statement implies that they are following the sentiment rather than leading it does it not?
The White House said nothing about taking joe rogan podcasts down:
Q Sure. Last week, the Surgeon General also was asked on MSNBC about Joe Rogan’s vaccine comments on Spotify. And he said that tech companies have an “important role to play” in stopping misinformation because he — they are the “predominant places” where misinformation spreads.
Spotify is putting out advisory warnings on episodes that have to do with COVID-19. Does the White House and the administration think this is a satisfactory step? Or do you — do you think that companies like Spotify should go further than just, you know, putting a label on there to say, “Hey, go do your own — you know, check this out. You know, there’s more research you can look at — you know, scientific research regarding COVID”?
MS. PSAKI: Sure. Well, last July, I — you probably know, but the Surgeon General also took the unprecedented step to issue an advisory on the risk of misinformation and public health, which is a very significant step. And amid that, he talked about the role social media platforms have.
So our hope is that all major tech platforms — and all major news sources, for that matter — be responsible and be vigilant to ensure the American people have access to accurate information on something as significant as COVID-19. And that certainly includes Spotifly [sic].
So, this disclaimer — it’s a positive step. But we want every platform to continue doing more to call out misinform- — mis- and disinformation while also uplifting accurate information.
I mean, look at the facts, right? You are 16 times more likely to be hospitalized if you’re unvaccinated and 68 times more likely to die than someone who is boosted if you’re unvaccinated. That’s pretty significant.
"So, this disclaimer — it’s a positive step. But we want every platform to continue doing more to call out misinform- — mis- and disinformation while also uplifting accurate information."
That's not saying they should be taken down, she says "do more to call out misinformation".
>Are you so sure it’s not due to customers voting with their wallets forcing the change? It’s easier than ever to pick up and leave a streaming service.
I don't think people left Spotify because of Joe Rogan, not in any real numbers anyway (and we can see that next they publish their user statistics). It's a few pundits and musicians making a negative publicity fuss...
>Who are these “pressure groups?” Are they individual musicians and customers? When do individuals morph into these straw men?
You could have written: "I don't believe there are pressure groups involved, just individual musicians and customers". Instead, you opted to insinuate that I disingenuously created some "straw men" (and thus, am not to be trusted, or whatever). How about the principle of charity, and just making your case, instead on shitting on the person you're discussing with?
There were never just some individuals and musicians, but also major media calling for cancelling the show again and again, group petitions such as:
Apologies if you felt shitted on, but I do believe that you are inventing straw men pressure groups and ignoring the fact that there might be a legitimate organic movement. So I am, in fact, making my case.
> It's a few [...] musicians making a negative publicity fuss
One thing I'd like to add on this point is that this kind of negative publicity fuss, raised by musicians, can be incredibly powerful. If you aren't familiar with the work and impact of Neil Young, especially songs like "Southern Man" and "Alabama," I encourage you to consider his work.
His music likely opened some eyes in the 70s while the American South was still gripped in racist fervor (as someone who grew up in the south, I too was impacted by these songs when I encountered them in the early 2000s). Musicians have the power to influence public opinion. That public opinion is influenced by them does not imply that all influence is the result of a greater agenda.
"If you aren't familiar with the work and impact of Neil Young"
What I find hilarious is the number of folks of a, certain political persuasion (the fact a public health issue is politicized is absolutely nuts), have deemed Neil Young and Joni Mitchell as irrelevant dinosaurs from an artistic perspective. Some even going so far as to say their historical importance is of a mere footnote.
Of course the firestorm their actions caused in the public discourse on this issue has shown their voice matters quite a bit.
>Of course the firestorm their actions caused in the public discourse on this issue has shown their voice matters quite a bit.
Media pundits and organizations can always blow up and enlarge the issues raised by some artists that they agree with to further a cause they'd advocate for anyway.
Doesnt mean the artists are relevant in 2022 pop culture - or that if they had said something different (with no eager pundits to push it) they would been also listened to.
In fact, Neil Young for one, has been laughed at (by the same media) several times in past 1-2 decades, for his "out of touch" tirades against compressed musid, his bizarro Pono music player business, and so on.
>pressure groups and ignoring the fact that there might be a legitimate organic movement.
Pressure groups can be organic too.
They just aren't just "individuals" -- and their influence is not the same as consumer choice to listen or not to the podcast (and thus relegate it to unprofitable).
>When do their actions, in your eyes, cease to be ordinary "vote with your wallet" market interaction?
Doesn't the act organization itself change it from a "vote with your wallet" (as an independent customer) to propagandizing and promoting your ideas to others on what they should buy?
When it comes to companies working like that, people call it a "cartel".
Also, isn't there a difference between movement organized and advocated "don't buy Spotify" versus group dictated Spotify what to sell?
In the second case Spotify caved because of the pressure/threat, not because the product wasn't selling.
It might still be a market decision (in the sense of it being an economic consideration of Spotify's behalf, as the ultimate threat was to their image and ultimately bottom line) but it wasn't a free market decision as in consumers signalling worth of a product with their purchases or lack thereof.
What you're describing is how "vote with your wallet" works when the number of people voting exceeds 1.
Like, what exactly is it do you think they are coordinating, other than individually choosing to vote with their wallets for similar reasons?
>It might still be a market decision (in the sense of it being an economic consideration of Spotify's behalf, as the ultimate threat was to their image and ultimately bottom line) but it wasn't a free market decision
What you're describing, making business decisions based on weighing the economic costs of losing customers vs. the economic benefits of keeping the content, is indeed a free market decision. The fact that there are no options that make everybody happy doesn't negate that.
> and even White House statements addressing the JR issue.
Which I think you can argue is a problem (to the original question). Dragging company execs to testify in front of congress about misinformation and then framing any (in)action as monopolistic (during a time of anti-trust inquires) isn't exactly "free market" either. I'm not convinced that influence has fundamentally changed the outcome in the past year but it seems a bit naive to think the government has no influence in these moderation decisions. It's not hard to imagine an example where this would be less defensible; "WH strong disapproves of these 'powerful' tech companies amplifying content that contains misinformation about our justifications to invade Iraq".
As I pointed out elsewhere, the White House didn’t criticize anyone, they were asked about how they felt about the disclaimer that Spotify had added, and the White House said they were in favor of calling out misinformation and uplifting accurate information.
That’s pretty different than how you portrayed it.
> Not to mention that this isn't the free market operating freely -- it's corporations being told what to do by pressure groups (as opposed to customers of those corporations voting with their wallets, e.g. by not listening to Rogan).
Aren’t artists and content creators Spotify customers, too? They use Spotify’s platform to sell and distribute their content. We consider both the buyer and the seller to be customers of eBay. We consider both the app user and the app developer to be customers of Apple. Why do you not also consider the content creators customers “voting with their wallet” in this situation?
Pressure groups often represent customers. If a political pressure group can't dangle a boycott, they don't have much practical pressure to apply.
In this case, Spotify is staring down the barrel of a well-organized boycott from both customers and content providers who may (or may not) sign contracts to let Spotify use their music, podcasts, etc.
There were a few Argentine tango orchestras in 1930-40s that were tricked into signing a deal with record companies only, as it turned out, to prevent them from going to a competitor. As a result we don't have any records of these orchestras for the period of the contract, which may be like two years lacunas in their recorded history.
There is something deeply wrong with destroying things that haven't yet reached their natural end or not letting them grow, even if one is legally entitled to.
My wife and I have been taking Argentine Tango lessons for about a year now. It took me a long time to understand the mysticism around the "big 4" orchestras but I can say that now I understand and appreciate your comment.
Well, maybe the big difference here is that you have this example where you feel the participants were tricked. I'm inclined to believe you from what little I know of music history.
There is zero reason to believe Joe Rogan was in any way tricked or coerced. The situations are materially different.
I don't disagree with you, but legally purchasing the intellectual property rights to a work, and the proceeding to hide it from the public is still censorship in my book.
It might not be quite as wrong or bad as, say, state-sponsored blanket censorship, but I think we should call it what it is.
A work was available and now it's not. The only reason being that an entity decided that it should be removed from view. Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information[0].
Here, information has been suppressed, thus, censored.
I think this is nuanced. I can see your point if an artist is forced sell their art through an unfavorable marketplace. However in this case that probably doesn’t apply. Joe Rogan has a big enough of a platform on his own that he can probably get by just fine without selling the rights to his show at all. The fact that he did despite that makes this slightly less nuanced.
How do you call the opposite phenomenon in which a company is forced to continue engaging in money-losing activities because of interests external to the company (in this case, the interest in not making Joe Rogan episodes unavailable)?
I find it hard to believe this is a net gain to Spotify in the long run. It may well have been legal, but Rogan signed on as exclusive to Spotify with the understanding that they would be a platform for him and allow him to further extend his brand and reach his followers. Spotify is still in the early stages of their plan to curate and improve advertising in the podcast space, and their plan is to sign exclusives, forcing listeners onto their platform where the free tier can now have targeted ads as opposed to traditional podcasting with traditional media style ads.
Now anyone who receives an offer like this from Spotify will have to consider the possibility of having their brand censored. This will either drive up the cost to Spotify or simply make content providers refuse all together. So, unless Spotify has decided to quit this business plan, I don’t think this is a good long-term solution.
I do think what happened is Spotify saw its DAUs and subscribers dipping, and after the bloodbath in $FB stock last week, got freaked out and abandoned a long-term business plan to prevent a dip in users this quarter.
I don’t think anyone here is arguing they should be forced to keep these episodes up. I just think that they should voluntarily want to do so, and that it’s bad we have a cultural climate where letting people hear contrarian political views is a financial risk in the first place.
I’m not sure what you’d call that. But standing up to an angry mob is called “spine”— something Spotify seems to lack. The only JR podcast I listened to was the Bernie Sanders one; I have no dog in this fight. But I do dislike it when a bunch of angry folks silence someone. I saw it all the time as a kid when Newt and the evangelical right were in power. Today, the same abhorrent behavior is coming from the other side of the aisle. It’s all the same to me; moralizing do-gooders who can’t just leave other folks alone.
Uh, plainly you do. The commenter's main point was that what the broadcaster did was not censorship (and whoever calls it that "need a reality check"). You're saying it "still is in my book". What much more different can the two of you be on this issue?
Part of the reason for the disconnect here probably lies in the fact that the definition given in the WP is overly broad and vague. The way the term is usually used, it strongly suggests some outside party, typically an authoritative body like a government, intervening to say "you cannot publish this". Basically, there needs to be some element of outside coercion for the term "censorship", or even "self-censorship" to apply.
And no -- the weight of public opinion does not constitute "coercion" in this context.
That's why when a company wakes up and realizes "gee, it turns out publishing endless amounts inflammatory crap that does not contribute to discourse and with essentially no artistic value is actually not so good for our overall image and business model" -- that's not what the term "censorship" was is really meant for.
My disagreement is purely semantic in nature. I disagree that we can't or shouldn't use the word "censorship" to describe Spotify's actions. The other parts of the parent comment; free market, free will, all parties within their rights, etc, that I'm all fine with.
I just think we need to be able to say hey, this is censorship, and it's not necessarily wrong because of XYZ reasons and it's fine and above-board. Spotify's got the rights to the show and nobody can or should be able to compel them to broadcast something they don't want to.
However, pointing to a nebulous category of "proper censorship" (which sounds like pretty much exactly the same thing, just perpetrated by a state actor instead of a private corp) as a way to invalidate the use of the word "censorship" in this context seems dishonest. Not to mention that it strikes me as odd to refer to some instances of censorship as "proper" compared to others.
Let's go along with the "proper censorship" narrative and put on the tinfoil hat for a moment. It would be easy for a sufficiently motivated state actor to create or compel a private company to acquire the rights to works that they want censored, and then simply use the private entity as a front to carry out the censorship on the government's behalf.
I'm not implying that's happening here, but we need to recognize that mostly anything is possible.
If I'm entirely unable to access a work today that was freely available yesterday, it has been censored. The devil's in the details, but the semantics and results here are very clear.
Okay, and I would counter-argue: your analogy doesn't make sense, we are talking about intellectual works of speech and information, not physical goods.
I hate to say this is a strawman because claiming logical fallacy is overused in Internet discourse, but that's what your comment feels like. Along with some ageism sprinkled in as an afterthought.
Of course censorship is not applicable to a physical product. I have only referred to the censorship of "speech, public communication, or other information."
Sorry, I don't get where you are going with this at all.
"If your local 7-Eleven had Oui and Hustler on its racks last week, but they are gone this week, it has been censored."
I would argue: "No - 7-Eleven either decided just those titles weren't selling all at that well. On top of generating negative press, and driving away families with children."
When you say "free market" you imply that there is zero political risk (meaning risk of politicians using their elevated powers against you) resulting from their choices.
In reality there is political risk for highly public decisions. Politicians do have power. They can call you before Congress under oath without any evidence of legal wrongdoing by anyone. They can start costly antitrust investigations. They can start costly audits. Anywhere along the way, if you make the slightest misstep (or even if you don't), they accuse you of perjury or lying to a federal official or obstruction of justice. Or maybe they just don't "protect" you as well as they might from various unfortunate events.
Moreover, there's a pattern of governments harnessing the power of private companies to various purposes through this kind of coercion. If you are a CEO with a comfortable life do you really want to test the ideal that it can't happen in the U.S.?
> I don't really understand why anyone who claims to be a proponent of a free market economy has an issue with a private corporation deciding what type of content they want to broadcast.
I don't know if this is your opinion or not, but in general, this argument might hold more water if "activists" weren't gleefully trying to shut down relatively free-speech sites like Gab and Parler and others.
You can't have it both ways and claim that business can allow whatever content they want and then try and shut down businesses who do just that.
I support the right of the company to do what they want, but that doesn't prohibit me from disagreeing with how the exercise that right. I just think their decision to cancel Rogan is ethically and morally wrong, my issue is not with the legality of the move.
So, “canceling” means continuing to afford the canceled party a platform now? I thought you folks were concerned/concern trolling regarding tech deplatforming people wholesale, which is something Spotify has pointedly not done here. If HN flags a single comment I made, am I canceled? What do I do, join Gab for this indignity? Write a polemic about how my rights to use someone else’s platform to share thoughts they don’t want to condone is a grave affront to me, because I have a right to inflict myself on you and you must allow me to do so if you operate technology?
It’s really painful to see people draw moral and ethical lines over episodes of a guy bullshitting into a microphone being removed. It’d be nice if your ire and indignation were directed at an issue that would objectively improve the world, like exploitation of children, food inequality and starvation, the actual horrors of tech instead of the ones you’ve attached to, or anything but the plight a millionaire making yet more millions to talk out loud.
Not the OP, but a world in which IT giants do delete speech they don't like might be the same world in which the actual horrors such as starvation, violence or civil wars do not get enough attention because a discreet request from the implicated government is enough to take the incriminating content down.
Look, for example, at the way that the Indian government used to strong-arm Twitter into obedience.
"It’s really painful to see people draw moral and ethical lines over episodes of a guy bullshitting into a microphone being removed. It’d be nice if your ire and indignation were directed at an issue that would objectively improve the world, like exploitation of children, food inequality and starvation..."
The free expression of ideas is more important than what you listed here. And see if you can figure out why it is directly related to said issues.
Well, it's the left that pushing to cancel Rogan, no question. I am also certainly opposed to right wing censorship in any forms, but that's not really what is being discussed here. This just seems like whataboutism.
Much like your original comment, and it doesn’t change that you targeted a political side that you blatantly disagree with. Your statement would be better made without the needless political slant, which as I point out, the other side have done it far more egregiously and in public institutions, such as libraries and schools.
To call this ‘censorship’ I believe is wrong:
1. It’s scientifically proven to be false. Misinformation, be it intended or otherwise brings its own moral and ethical issues.
2. Private companies have the right to choose what they publish/sell on their platform. Preventing them from doing so is also a suppression of free speech.
3. Everyone has a right to an opinion, and to voice that opinion. No-one has an inalienable right to have that opinion published, agreed with or disseminated by any platform they choose.
If anyone has taken choice away, it’s Rogan. Rogan chose to sell exclusivity to his catalog for a very handsome some. Along with that, he chose to forgo certain rights - one being which podcasts Spotify choose to make available.
I think censorship is morally and ethically wrong. I'm center right, I voted for Biden, I don't have a "team". I find it mostly sad and amusing that you think insulting me for defending Rogan will get you anywhere... on a thread about Rogan. Christ almighty.
And yes, I'm feeling a bit baited that I even bothered responding to your throwaway troll bullshit.
Not necessarily disagreeing with your sentiment but...
One can dispute and critique their own "team". As a matter of fact the inability to self critique is what lead us to this current state of unnecessary tribalism.
If I consider myself "left" I should still be able to criticize the "left". The problem is the mob cancels anyone critical so we're now eating ourselves alive and pushing away anyone that does not toe the party line verbatim. That's a great way to send teammates to another team.
> If I consider myself "left" I should still be able to criticize the "left".
And...most people on the left do that. A lot.
> The problem is the mob cancels anyone critical
“Cancels” is just bullshit. Virtually every person that has supposedly been “cancelled” still has a prominent platform and large and devoted audience; what they've done is been criticized and lost some audience and goodwill because certain of their ideas have competed poorly in the marketplace of ideas.
> That's a great way to send teammates to another team.
Just because you consider yourself on someone else's “team” doesn't mean they see you that way, and just because you see yourself as, e.g., “left”, doesn't mean everyone else on the “left” is part of the same team.
Anarchists and Libertarian Socialists see themselves as on the “left”.
Lenin-/Stalin-/Maoists see themselves as on the “left”.
They aren’t, even approximately, the same team.
And neither is the same team as, say, Social Democrats or Democratic Socialists, also on the “left”, though sometimes people in those groups may have a temporary, transitory, tactical alignment of interests.
If I'm on a team it's team anti-censorship because I think it's morally and ethically wrong. You can feel free to believe me or not believe me, but by my observations it's really only the far left that is defending this censorship.
Alright so this is a tangent from the main conversation, and I want to keep it separate from the censorship talk.
I think by definition you can’t define/identify a side, and then place yourself in opposition to them and not be on a team? You may not have been on a team prior to the issue coming up or you might only be on the team temporarily for that issue, but it’s still two sides and you picked one, right?
Yeah, that's fair. Certainly in terms of debates about specific issues, picking a side amounts to "joining a team". What I was trying to refer to by "not being on a team" was more along the lines that I am not a Democratic or Republican ideologue or spin doctor, I will vote based on the issues rather than blind adherence to a specific party. I suppose a better phrasing would be that I am on a "side" of the debate but I am not on a specific "team" in terms of national party politics.
I believe the core issue here is: while the first amendment applies to government, it is something that businesses should try to make a core part of their ethos. The censorship that tech companies have been doing are really against free speech and freedom of association.
Yes, companies are within their legal right to do the censorship we are seeing. That doesn't mean it's right.
> I don't really understand why anyone who claims to be a proponent of a free market economy has an issue with a private corporation deciding what type of content they want to broadcast.
C'mon, you know these claimants only mean "I want a free market for me".
This is blatently obvious in America right now. A LOT of voices crying out against the 'cancel culture' are the first to line up when it comes to canceling something THEY don't like.
You're getting caught in the weeds and missing what's actually happening. It's not just about Spotify and Joe Rogan. If Spotify dropped Rogan and he goes elsewhere, people will still be trying to silence him. If Rogan is silenced, the mob isn't going to suddenly drop their pitchforks and go home. The corporate media isn't going to stop attacking independent media.
This is a larger cultural question and will determine where we go from here.
Are we still a society that values free expression and open debate?
You discount the damage trolls like Rogan et al did to the tolerance needed to make free speech a possibility.
We have these media trolls just spewing provocative nonsense, finding any open wound in our discourse and throw salt on it so they can have their lols, dollars, and influence. How can you be surprise when free speech is finding it's boundaries.
This is not even a partisan thing, I do believe exploitative media that feeds on strife is very good business and thus it finds its audience, whether it's left or right. Catering to the different psychologies and fears while maximizing profits.
This is exactly my concern for today's content and it puts us in a place where future content is at risk. Removing select episodes of sitcoms because they aren't politically correct means current shows self censor before creation. Removing back episodes of podcasts can cause a chilling effect on newer content and new creators. There is additional concern when the government is encouraging private companies to silence content. We need to decide if we want to live in a monoculture of thought pushed down from the political leaders or if we want to live in a diverse culture of thoughts and ideas pushed up from the individuals.
Not entirely correct, it is a licensing deal, with exclusivity to Spotify. JR is still the owner of the IP, however, it can only be distributed through Spotify.
But your point still stands, Spotify chooses what they will distribute, which is okay.
My only gripe, in this whole Spotify/Rogan saga, is with the mainstream media that sees Rogan as a threat to their business model so they try to slander him for miss-information, while being greater purveyors of miss-information themselves.
Let me go off on a slight tangent: Should all jokes be taken at face value? Communication is a complex business, and surely what's literal is largely irrelevant; what matters is what is communicated; i.e. what a recipient learns from whatever signals you transmit.
JR is deceptive not because every spoken word he says taken in isolation is false, but because the way he frames and presents various sources leads listeners to draw false conclusions. Taking everything he says at face value is no more valid that taking a joke at face value. TL;DR: - "just asking questions" is deceptive; that's not a valid way to learn nor inform. We could discuss in depth how it's deceptive, but that's not really the point - the point is that not all questions will be interpreted literally, so you need to do the same when judging how reasonable that communication is. You have to look holistically at the message listeners will hear.
> JR is deceptive not because everything he says taken in isolation is false
I understand at what you are getting at, words at face value don't mean much, context is everything. However, listening to JR I never get a feeling that I'm being intentionally deceived.
The falsehoods he believes seem to me to be a genuine lack of awareness on his parts, the fact that he changes opinions when confronted with the fact what he said was bullshit gives me trust that he is not out to deceive me.
If he's framing X doctor as best in the field because of Y achievements is because the average Joe would also believe that as well. And the fact that he has corrected some statements made by the past two controversial guests, regarding Covid, is the reason why I trust he's not deceiving with some agenda. Unlike with most mainstream media where I am always trying to figure out the underlying agenda of every statement made from the hosts.
I have no idea if JR is intentionally deceptive, or merely deluded. I think that kind of stuff is often something of a grey area anyhow; I mean part of being able to convince people of things is to be able to come up with a narrative that sounds convincing to yourself. It's perfectly plausible to me, at least, that he's convinced himself of things that aren't reasonable, that he may at one point have doubted, but now thinks are at least plausible because he's so embedded himself and his persona in the notion that alternative explanations must be reasonable. In any case, whether confused, delusional, honestly misinformed, intentionally exaggerating, intentionally misleading - or some combination thereof - he can still be deceiving his listeners.
As to an agenda: he has clear monetary and reputational motives for coming up with controversial guests and perspectives. People _like_ acquiring followers, and he's even being paid to do so. There's no need for anything as crude as an outright payment by some snake-oil salesperson to cause a conflict of interest, fame and fortune are quite he incentives by themselves - and here too, people can convince themselves they're onto something (and do so entirely honestly!) when they get this kind of positive feedback - even if it's nonsense.
If you believe that Joe's motives are any more pure than those of mainstream-media hosts, you're wearing rose-tinted glasses. Also, he is a mainstream media host. He's just a deceptive one, that's all. If anything, most mainstream media hosts have _fewer_ incentives to lie; after all, they tend not to simultaneously be media owners nor to rake in quite as much cash as he does, though surely there are exceptions. Also, the mere fact that other media tends to involve a much greater back-office makes it slightly harder to go off the deep end - your colleagues may sometimes say things to burst your (potentially honest) self-deceptive bubble.
It should be up to the listeners to judge the content of JR. Not someone with a blue pencil (or was it a red pencil). There is no possible justification in a free society to censor someone just because someone might be mislead by them. It is patronizing to think that we know better and so should decide for the rest what is available or not.
1. I'm curious: why do you believe every individual human should be forced to/be free to (same thing here!) judge each piece of content for themselves? Why is it morally right to let millions of people be deceived, when you know they'll be deceived?
2. On a rather related front: what do you think is the key differentiating factor that explains why humans (homo sapiens) have so devastatingly outstripped all ecological competitors?
My personal answer to question 2 explains why I have my doubts about all too rigidly accepting your moral thesis here. I mean, I accept and support the idea that honest debate can help surface tricky truths - and that in that context debate must be free, but not that all speech should be promoted unconditionally. That's harmful, and the only reason we're even talking about that is because as a society we've come to see the first amendment not merely as a tool to constrain an overly powerful, potentially abusive government, but as an axiom of patriotic identity. The first amendment is not perfect, and even if it were, it should not be applied blindly to every situation, nor should it replace all other social norms about honesty and truth.
Let me turn that onto yourself. Why do you believe that you are right? And why do you think you (or whoever) gets to decide what is correct or not for the remaining millions? No one is forcing anyone to anything (after all only who wants tunes in to JRE) although I think it is very healthy to have an enquiring mind and to have the habit of questioning and judging everything of importance you come by.
Hence my question 2. If you can answer that honestly, and in good faith, at least my personal answer to this follows, and hopefully, eventually, why Rogan's approach is fundamentally invalid; why just asking questions is deceptive.
But even if your perspective differs - I don't expect everyone to follow my lead, of couse - I don't think you're going to understand my reasoning without at least trying to understand and answer that question. In essence - your assertion that it's (implicitly unconditionally) "very healthy to have an enquiring mind" is backed by an assumption I do not share. I know that there are conditions here, and Rogan isn't satisfying those. And the heart of that disagreement is behind question 2.
So if we censor information and don't let people like Joe Rogan ask questions then the human species will be a better species instead of some kind of an ecological disaster?
Also, you don't think that having an enquiring mind is good? How do you justify that? And what is the assumption I made that you don't share?
Maybe Spotify, as the owner and publisher of the content that they paid a lot of money for, realise that THEY are misleading you and they aren’t comfortable with that / feel that you deserve better / would rather that you stay alive so that you continue to send them money [delete as appropriate]
When I signed up for Spotify I did sign up for their moral values but for the service they provide. It is up to them to do whatever they like with their platform and it is up to me to voice my opinion and vote with my feet when I am no longer happy with their service.
Could you please give us some specific examples of Joe Rogan being deceptive with direct quotes in context? I've only ever listened to a few episodes but I'm always suspicious of vague allegations with no evidence.
If you want professional fact-checking, he's high profile enough you can google it. E.g. this is recent: https://www.bbc.com/news/60199614 and includes some amusing quackery. However, the real problem here isn't just the outright claims he makes, it's that he platforms dangerous cook's like Malone and presents their debunked, non-scientific nonsense as reasonable.
Name a single MSM person or outlet and I'll give you ten stories that were objectively speaking misinformation that led to far more severe consequences than anything Joe Rogan has done. Which one do you want? The "Russian bounty" story? The "Ivermectin ODs keep shot people waiting outside" story? How about the "WMD" thing? Go ahead, let's see how Joe Rogan's latest monkey story compares to that.
TL;DR: People enjoy Joe Rogan because he's having simple conversations without pretending to have all the answers. Meanwhile the entire MSM, from Rachel Maddow to James Clapper has deliberately lied to their audience to push for wars and escalations. If you want to start cancelling, start there.
This applies to almost any media outlet in the world, even your comment here. For example here you framed JR as the only person doing framing to push his agenda.
Right, so for all media you need to consider their message holistically, not parse statements in some legalistic fashion that no real listener would interpret them in. And some messages survive that test, and others don't. Given the absurd covid nonsense JR has said himself and platformed (which is much more impactful), I don't trust his judgement. And of course, there are outlets that specialize in doing this kind of review, and while they tend to take things a little to literally IMNSHO, that only serves to _underrepresent_ how problematic outlets like Joe Rogan are, and he doesn't rank highly as it is.
TLDR: That a message has context is an inescapable fact of life; but using context to deceive isn't.
>I don't really understand why anyone who claims to be a proponent of a free market economy has an issue with a private corporation deciding what type of content they want to broadcast.
It's amazing how people don't get cognitive dissonance over this disingenuous song and dance. The people lauding the choice of private companies to operate as they please when they deplatform are the very people pressuring private companies to deplatform people they don't like in the first place. If you were genuinely in favor of private companies operating as they see fit, you wouldn't feel motivated to pressure them to drop content you don't like.
>What Spotify chooses to do with it is completely up to them
What we don't like is that is it not left "up to them" what to do with their content. The point of the free market is that individuals are left to act independently in their own interests. This ideal is undermined when groups create pressure to deplatform or pull content.
If records of what people did and said are conveniently deleted from history, no one can be held accountable for what they say and do. The ideal that companies can do whatever they want is far too short sighted. The modern world is so stuck on a rigid definition of freedoms that conveniently changes when it doesn't serve the perspective it is being "preached" from.
Platforms are contracted by their users, they are not simply homeowners with private property. Too many companies these days get away with code and content changes without proper accountability, and things are regularly hidden to cover tracks... It's making the Internet very toxic now, and the blanket statements don't apply any more, people should always be held accountable for what they do and say in the course of making money at all levels, that's the only real thing protecting us from becoming slaves to corporate interests.
Yeah, it’s their free will to censor the content that they deliver. It’s also the consumers free will to have a problem with it. I don’t think anyone here is advocating for a legislative solution to this dispute. Spotify is making a financial/business decision, and the consumers are concerned with the product they are paying for.
>I don't really understand why anyone who claims to be a proponent of a free market economy has an issue with a private corporation deciding what type of content they want to broadcast.
Not everyone who supports free markets is a market fundamentalist. It is not hard to understand that people may support free markets for most goods but oppose them for healthcare, education, senate seats and slaves. Do you really have a hard time understanding that?
>Exactly what he sold (NDA, limitations on his speech in his free time etc.) we'll probably never know, but whoever calls this "censorship" needs a reality check.
Censorship is the suppression of information. You may consider it good, you may consider it bad; it may be done by public institutions, it may be done by private institutions. NDAs are literally a form of censorship. I am not sure what you even mean by censorship if you think that isn't censorship.
Precisely. If one pays me $100 to not say "cucumber" today, thats not censorship. If one tells me not to say "heil hitler!" at their garden party, thats also not censorship. Surely there are other garden parties where such statements are welcome - Or I am free to throw my own.
Now, if I can't say "cucumber" at all, in any context, whether I entered in any agreement or not - thats censorship.
The right is maximalist on property rights except when it negatively impacts them. Then we need government regulation. If it were more left leaning ideas being deplatformed nobody on the right would care and instead the left would be up in arms about “cancel culture.”
Very very few people are consistent in their views about privacy, freedom, or property rights. Politics is mostly a football game and the refs are only right when they call it in favor of your team.
That is debatable. Many would argue that censorship "by definition" involves the government (not the case here), and not merely the removal of content by someone, but prohibition for everyone to distribute it (not the case here as far as I can tell).
It literally satisfies the definition of censorship of three dictionaries I checked. Government censorship is the most egregious type we should all fear, but it's not the only type.
If you're saying "political censorship" is the only form of censorship that matters - it's debatable in the same way flat earth arguments are debatable.
Follow up clarification: If your argument is "corporate censorship is benign when compared to political censorship" then I concede that is very debatable indeed.
> As a proponent of Net Neutrality, I recognize that there are instances where corporations should not have the last say in any matter.
Since when did the term net neutrality change from meaning "a free and open internet on equal terms" to "expropriating platforms that refuse to show things I want to see"?
> I don't really understand why anyone who claims to be a proponent of a free market economy has an issue with a private corporation deciding what type of content they want to broadcast.
People support the free market because they like freedom. People conspiring to deplatform legal content cuts against that freedom. And they see arguments like this one as rhetorical tricks to get them to disarm and be colonized.
This is just the GPL vs. BSD wars all over again, with people claiming that freedom only means BSD-style and not worrying about the freedom-preserving aspects of the GPL and that if you're pro-GPL you're anti-freedom.
It seems to have been a licensing deal, so control reverts to him at the end of the deal. It doesn't sound like he actually "sold" all rights, and he almost certainly only sold certain rights even during the deal. As you say, we'll probably never know all of the details.
I do agree with your underlying defense of private property. Spotify has a legal right to do this. There is no contractural issue here. And this is not censorship.
But there is a cultural question that I think this defense sidesteps a bit. I'd frame it as a question.
What level of heterodox opinion would you encourage Spotify (and the like) to tolerate? What opinion would be heterodox to you or your peers that you'd want to see Spotify to defend as the realm of reasonable on a platform of broad interest to the general public?
Not sure whether your question was rhetorical but here is a suggestion anyway:
Draw the line where people spread lies or harass others so that actual harm gets done in the real world. Alex Jones got deplatformed after some of his fans were threatening grieving Sand Hooks families. Joe Rogans episodes were removed after they spread misinformation that convinces people to not get vaccinated in the middle of a pandemic, which will probably cause some deaths given how many people listen to his content.
This sounds good at first, but I think it wears differently if you try to apply it to something in a different political quadrant.
Consider in the summer of 2020 there was a popular social movement that had quite a presence on social media that was spreading incorrect and ultimately very harmful statistics about police violence.
Arguably, this led to wide spread riots, large scale property destruction in multiple cities and ultimately an increase in crime. I think if a vocal minority bullied large corporations to effectively deplatform those social justice organizations then I think many people would be playing a different tune.
Lol. Why is the Dr.Mallone and Dr.Peter McCullough interview still there? Those are the controversial ones. They did not say not take the vaccines. Dr.Mallone said that he is vaccinated.
It can be both censorship and exercising intellectual property rights. Only buying something to burn it is obviously censorship. A legal monetary transaction can be a means to censorship
> I don't really understand why anyone who claims to be a proponent of a free market economy has an issue with a private corporation deciding what type of content they want to broadcast.
1. The private corporation “decided” it wanted to broadcast JRE
2. X happened
3. Private corporation decided it didn’t want to broadcast some JRE episodes
Your hypothesis is that the popular outcry against JR, and the associated potential monetary losses, was not actually the reason Spotify did this.
Rather, you believe the action was because the white house said generally that they could do more. Like, that vague statement which didn't even mention episode removal, forced Spotify to do this, not the money.
So if it's profitable for Youtube and Twitter to push for a war and ban all dissenting voices you wouldn't feel there's a need to discuss whether or not that's a good thing, you'd instead have an argument about whether or not private companies should be able to do that?
There are far more interesting issues at hand and if you pretend this is a discussion about the legalities of this behaviour instead of a question about where idiotic self-harming nonsense like this leads our society you're being deliberately obtuse.
> I don't really understand why anyone who claims to be a proponent of a free market economy has an issue with a private corporation deciding what type of content they want to broadcast.
You don't understand why someone would want to have all episodes of their favourite podcast available in one place? Just because someone supports the free market doesn't mean they don't have preferences. Support of the free market just means that one wants buyers and sellers to be able to transact without coercion, it doesn't imply any specific opinion about the practices of a company.
I don't like bad products and don't want companies to do stuff like this. I don't particularly care about Joe Rogan, but I've had a hell of a time finding episodes of various TV shows that have had episodes removed (Community, South Park, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia) from services, and eventually I just end up pirating that episode.
I don't think what Spotify's doing should be illegal but that doesn't mean I have to like it or that I can't say they're making their product worse.
If you are referring to people who want Spotify to be forced to do things by law, like keep episodes up (which would be bizarre), then I'm against that too.
> You don't understand why someone would want to have all episodes of their favourite podcast available in one place?
I understand that perfectly well. I don't understand why Spotify would be obligated to serve that need, or indeed serve any content they own that they do not want to serve.
When you make a comment like this without even acknowledging the social dynamic at play, which is like the whole story, you come across as very disingenuous and very pro censorship.
This is not something Spotify woke up one day and decided to do of their own volition, with their own free market defined property. There was much more to it than that.
The White House(!) was calling for this type of censorship!
Do you think that might be relevant to the discussion?
I would turn your first sentence around on you. I can't understand how anyone who sees the garbage we're inundated with in all forms of media could be a proponent of an unfettered free market economy. We used to have laws to help ensure we have media we can trust. Then they repealed those laws and we got Fox News... and, incomprehensibly, it got steadily worse from there. The current situation is untenable.
But they aren’t deciding for themselves, they’re being coerced by a vocal minority of people who are threatening their entire existence and have already done significant damage to their corporate valuation and reputation precisely because they are not broadcasting exactly what this vocal minority demands. It’s not about freedom for businesses. It is the exact opposite!
Freedom of speech has never meant the right to force platforms to broadcast your message.
Nobody is violating JR’s free speech, Spotify is just acting within the framework of the agreement they made with JR.
Whether that involves only the podcast itself or limits on what he can say regarding their interactions, we don’t know because the deal is not public. But nobody forced JR to sign anything, including any potential NDAs.
Definitely intentional! Parent is making the point that freedom of speech should not require authorities compelling speech, even though some free speech advocates seem to be going in that direction.
Platforms are starting to form practical monopolies.
Google controls searching for content. If they don’t like the topic you will never be found. They routinely suppress anything on the right.
Hosting that can handle load and hackers for normal people is extremely difficult.
I think the real issue isn't that people are calling for censorship. They're calling for Spotify to not pay people to produce political propaganda.
Now, we get the worst of both worlds, where Spotify funds the production of harmful propaganda (by their own published standards), and also starts censoring independently produced content.
What specifically is the harmful political propaganda? Please provide direct quotes in context so that we can understand whether your complaint is valid.
You're not making any sense. The Spotify Platform Rules don't mention anything about "political propaganda" or "harmful propaganda", as per your original comment above. So what was your point exactly?
I don't think there is any conflict here, people aren't criticizing how the free market works, they're criticizing Spotify for what they see as caving. The "free market" allows companies to do whatever they want with their IP, and it also allows people who are unhappy with that company's actions to criticize them. There's nothing that's not "free market" about that.
If you are trying to make the distinction that "censorship" is a term with a specific definition that applies to government censorship, I don't think people really disagree with that either, they're just using the phrase loosely because nobody's provided a better concept to apply. Call it corpo-sensorship, or corpoship, or whatever, but until there's a better word people will just keep using the more digestible one in a lazy way.
I agree. I’m a free market, free speech guy, and I have no problem with companies doing whatever they want with their content. There are fortunately plenty of places to get podcasts, and there are plenty of podcasts. If you want to dig into any issue, you can do so on the free and open internet. May it ever be so.
I agree with everything you said, but I feel that you're missing the point here.
The issue is not _that_ the episodes were deleted.
The issue is that social pressure resulted in removal of information from (what is considered by most as) the "public realm". This information comes in the form of "open" (seeming) discussion with people who hold various views. This type of debate and discussion should be encouraged by our society.
This stands in stark contrast with the profit motivator that drives those who govern these "public realm"-ish services. This is not a matter of the free market being free, but more that our society is becoming greatly dependent on services that are intrinsically business driven. Those services being seen as the "open forum" that they are not needs to be fixed.
I don't like rogan, for all i care, he can burn in hell.
But : the negotiation would have run very very different if they would have said :we buy it, but will never use or publish it!
He might have still sold (for a higher price) or rejected the offer.
You can't change the "purpose" of a contract after it was made.
In german, we have a law, yes a law, basically saying : in treu und glauben (in good faith / in trust and believe) it basically prevents contractors to write contracts which fuck over signers.
It is super rarely used for misuse of contract law / information of the signer, but sometimes it is. This is probably one of those cases.
In good faith, that Spotify will publish his work, he signed the contract.
> I don't really understand why anyone who claims to be a proponent of a free market economy has an issue with a private corporation deciding what type of content they want to broadcast.
Being a proponent of free markets doesn't prevent me from criticizing how that freedom is exercised.
> What Spotify chooses to do with it is completely up to them, even if they bought it with the express intention of "burning" it all, i.e. never broadcasting it, that would still not be censorship
It is censorship by any reasonable definition. It's just not illegal censorship.
Once you have copyright there no longer is a free market economy. In a true free market economy, anyone who has a copy would be free to distribute those missing episodes and could do so easily since the price of making additional copies is effectively zero. In a reality with copyright your argument needs to take into account the purpose of why there is copyright in the first place. In the US the original purpose of copyright was to incentivize the creation of content and locking up content goes against that.
I don't have a problem with this particular instance of deplatforming because podcasts are a highly competitive space that relies mostly on RSS still. However, "free markets" according to the original definition meant free not only from state control, but from private monopolistic rent-seeking as well. In cases where one platform is especially dominant, it's not really a free market, and in those cases, it is justified to be worried about censorship.
I think people are genuinely struggling with the idea that in some ways these corporations are nearly as powerful or more so, in certain aspects, than the government itself. It's a mindf*ck to consider that they can regulate speech on their platform because the platform itself is so encompassing, sprawling, and massive. It's not hard to understand (note: different than agreeing with) when looking at it through that lens.
You're conflating whether or not a private entity is free to do something with whether or not I agree with the soundness of that action. They are distinct.
So basically "If you are a proponent of the free market economy, you shouldn't complain about things a company does as long as they're compliant with the letter of the law."
That's an especially rich take considering the controversy is over actions a company is taking specifically to address other peoples' complaints.
Just because you are free to do something does not mean it's always a good idea to do it, and just because I support your right to do that thing does not mean that I should refrain from letting you know how I feel about it.
Don't expect any businesses to fall on a sword for ideology when their primary concern is always their bottom line. The free market has spoken. I suggest you go reread free market first principles.
You can support people's ability to make to decisions and you can tell them when you disagree. It's not government censorship, but it's still censorship.
I think the most important part here is - does the spotify deal make JR unhappy? Does it make his audience unhappy, and thus himself?
For example, if too many episodes are deleted, he will maybe not at all feel the fulfillment and happiness of doing the job he previously enjoyed. That factor ultimately decides if keeping the contract or breaking it is the better solution in the long run.
Fans of JR want him to be able to publish what he wants, since it's a proxy for having fulfilling job and successful podcast. Getting paid a lot is a forgettable factor - once that money is already safely streaming in :)
I don't get it. Maybe you're assuming things about me that don't make sense? laissez-faire capitalist is not me, at least (but I am a fish that swims in neoliberal infused water unfortunately - i.e. the culture in the western countries).
There was an uproar. What is ironic, one of the party's postulates (visible on their website as a standalone slogan) was that they want to change the law so that businesses can refuse service to any person or group for any reason.
> I don't really understand why anyone who claims to be a proponent of a free market economy has an issue with a private corporation deciding what type of content they want to broadcast.
You can but it needs to be handled through the free market. One shouldn't be asking any government to step in and make some person or company do something.
Perhaps you can support both free markets and absolutely free speech. Something that free market players should strive towards.
Then again supporting free market leads to many other unethical things than censorship. Like slavery, why shouldn't you be able to sell some person or yourself to slavery? That is entirely in accord of free markets.
If the government openly pressures Spotify, that is government censorship, which is literally what just happened.
Second:
Because there isn’t a good alternative for distribution.
There really isn’t.
Because the press employs less people nationwide than any time since … who knows, before the 1950s.
We need good information. We need uncensored information and this includes misinformation. We need to hear opinions and points of view including contrarian, controversial, and fringe ones.
I got an something important out of that Alex Jones returns episode. No one else I know thought it had any value, but for whatever reason I saw value in it.
What is the uncensored alternative? Truly.
If cloudflare can shut down whoever they want, if social media shuts down whoever they want, what is the real solution?
If we don’t have an answer, we don’t have free speech, so talking about Spotify being a private company is true but it can’t be viewed in isolation.
I believe in companies having freedom to do what they want but I also believe in civil rights. We need the civil right to prevent large corporations from discriminating against opinions they do not like.
I don't believe governments should force private companies or people to publish or say things they don't want to.
But I do think there is an issue where companies that are monopolies control large parts of public discourse.
I would prefer the right to be able to participate in public discourse without being tied to particular companies. For example, interoperability protocols for messaging and social networking.
Then people have the power to engage with who they like and companies can no longer control the flow of information in the same way. In the earlier days of the internet this is what it was like, before Facebook and Twitter monopolised and controlled information flow.
> I don't believe governments should force private companies or people to publish or say things they don't want to.
Do you believe governments should force private companies to serve people they don’t want to? If so, then you understand how civil rights work. It’s not enough to ensure the government respects our rights, the government must also ensure that private companies respect our rights. Free speech has become a civil rights issue.
I believe governments should prevent companies from discriminating against people in very limited ways. These are protected characterists such as race or sexual orientation Generally these are things that are innate to a person and are not a matter of choice for them.
I don't believe political viewpoints fall into that category, but I'm willing to hear any good arguments that they should be.
> I don't believe political viewpoints fall into that category, but I'm willing to hear any good arguments that they should be.
If you don’t believe that political viewpoints should be a protected category then you are condoning private entities pressuring the public into certain political viewpoints. If I cannot use Spotify unless I agree with their politics then that will strongly influence me to agree with their politics to the extent that their product has utility in my life, which may be to a significant degree. This may be in a situation where my politics wouldn’t ordinarily align with Spotify’s if I were left to my own critical thinking.
I believe we should generally limit the amount of influence private companies have on the political viewpoints of the population. Especially when these private companies can be very powerful corporations controlled by a relatively small amount of people. Especially in a democracy.
I do agree that the control that just a few large monopolies have over public discourse and information flow is a huge problem.
I think we need to limit their power by ensuring that no company can have such a monopoly, and I'd like to see greater choice and interoperability. Break up the network effect that gives them this control.
I don't think making political viewpoints a protected characteristic is a good way to achieve that, and would cause as many problems as it would solve.
> I don't think making political viewpoints a protected characteristic is a good way to achieve that, and would cause as many problems as it would solve.
By this logic, civil rights for race, etc. was not a good way to solve the discrimination issue. The real solution would have been to break up large companies since if there are no large companies then different races and sexes could just open up their own businesses to serve their own communities without the need to force other small business owners to serve people they do not want to serve.
But that is obviously not the problem civil rights aim to solve. Allowing companies to discriminate by any identity characteristic promotes the Balkanization of society which is something we do not want. Democrat and republican enclaves are just as fractious to the nation as white and black enclaves.
What problems would civil rights for political orientation cause that civil rights for race, sex, etc. do not cause?
You raise some excellent points, and I don't have comprehensive answers to them. At the very least you're making me re-evaluate my position.
I agree balkanisation is a big issue. We actually have that anyway with large service providers hosting everything, e.g. filter bubbles, AI driven news feeds, etc. Balkanisation in information flow can be mitigated by requiring interoperability protocols, to prevent lock-in to particular service providers.
I want to remove the ability of large companies to be able to monitor and manipulate information flow in society. Not just for political viewpoints, but for everything. So I guess I have wider goals than this specific issue.
To your question on what problems would be caused by civil rights for political viewpoints that don't apply to the others, I would return to the fact that other protected characteristics are essentially innate to a person and aren't a matter of choice, and are relatively easy to define. Pretty much anything anyone says can be viewed as a political statement, or it can be argued as such. You would have to carve out a large number of exceptions and argue them all on a case by case basis, and by law in many cases. Is hate speech permitted? Incitement to violence?
Spreading dangerous mis-information? Who assesses whether a statement is a political statement or an exception that is not protected?
I don't see the above as any kind of rebuttal of your position. I'm still thinking about your arguments, it's just what I have right now. Not sure how much longer we can go in this thread, but thanks for giving me an interesting and thought provoking debate!
> Is hate speech permitted? Incitement to violence? Spreading dangerous mis-information? Who assesses whether a statement is a political statement or an exception that is not protected?
To address this question, there is at least 200 years of US common law available to evaluate whether or not something should be protected under the first amendment. I’m simply suggesting that we protect the same rights to speech in the private sphere that we already do in the public sphere, at the very least for companies whose main line of business is serving as a platform for the speech of others that would otherwise be generally open to the public. In the age of privately owned and centralized online media platforms and marketplaces, extending civil rights to free speech seems logical.
> thanks for giving me an interesting and thought provoking debate!
> I don't really understand why anyone who claims to be a proponent of a free market economy has an issue with a private corporation deciding what type of content they want to broadcast.
Left-wing market anarchists (e.g. the C4SS) would respond that anything involving "intellectual property" is an inherently unfree market that unjustly upholds monopolies on artificially scarce immaterial goods through the threat of state violence.
From what I've seen on HN, censorship is anytime a platform, publisher or outlet divests itself of a right-wing content producer. Threads about Parler, Youtube, Gab, Parler & Cloudflare have wild levels of engagement with everything being considered censorship. But when books like Maus are removed from the shelves, we don't hear a peep out of the HN community compared to a banned twitter account.
Are you seriously saying you can't have a problem with anything a corporation ever does, as long as the motive is to make money? Else you're basically a socialist?
Does that include Monsanto poisoning the ground? Blackwater lobbying for war in the third world?
Quite to the contrary, intellectual property rights are hotly debated in free market economies and granted by the government. For the most part people aren’t 100% free market or 100% communism/whatever anyway.
I'll try to explain why I have an issue with what is happening here.
Yes, I agree with almost everything you said. However, the issue is that platforms are consolidated. Depending on your chosen format of content, there are only 2-3 viable platforms to reach people - and for some types of content, only one.
And if those very small number of platforms decide to, or are pressured to, delist content or a content creator, this is bad. Okay, you don't want to call it 'censorship', so lets invent a new term - 'kindacensorship'. Kindacensorship is identical to censorship. It has all the properties of censorship and all the negative effects of censorship.
If we had our present day internet infrastructure in the 1950s, there would have been moral outrage at, for example, gay content. And youtube and twitch and reddit would be kindacensoring all gay creators, and all who say that maybe homosexuality isn't so bad, and everything culturally adjacent to these topics. Because the majority demands it. And the majority would have demanded it, because that was the culture of the 1950s.
Then, all those gay creators would have been forced off all platforms, all internet infrastructure, and from all types of mainstream media - tv, radio, etc. Yes, they could have still written their thoughts, but it is an absolute guarantee that they'd languish in obscurity, reaching only each other, but not the masses.
(If we had our present day internet infrastructure in the 1900s, there would have been moral outrage at people talking about desegragation. Or wanting to abolish the monarchy. Or communism.)
Is it not obvious that this would have been bad? Kindacensorship would have stopped dissenters, would have halted the social evolution. And this is exactly what is happening now. The only reason silencing gay people sounds bad, and silencing Joe Rogan sounds good, is because the one message is culturally acceptable, and the other has not yet passed to the Overton window of acceptability. And if we allow kindacensorhip to grow, we will culturally stagnate. All dissenters will be silenced.
Kindacensorship is identical to censorship in form, and in function. Who cares that it's not the government banning books, and it's a (very) small cabal of technological companies deciding what can and cannot be said? Is this somehow better? I genuinely don't think it is.
And I don't know what I'm proposing, exactly. Not sure I know how I'd renegotiate the social contract. I just know that I'm seeing kindacensorship everywhere and it. is. bad.
Ok but in this precise case, podcasts have not fallen to mono/duo/trio-poly yet.
Joe Rogan made a decision to take the money and give in to a corporation trying to make a podcast monopoly a reality. Who is to complain when the inevitable abuse of power ensues? If it didn't happen now, when podcasts are still open and standardized, it would've happened later once podcasts became proprietary.
> I'm seeing kindacensorship everywhere and it. is. bad.
Everyone isn't always going to agree with you, and they have their own rights.
You're having a hard time articulating what you mean because it doesn't really make sense. If you can force someone to publish and promote something they don't want to, they can force you to publish and promote something you don't want to. The cause of liberty has not been served if this happens.
Then maybe Joe Rogan shouldn’t have sold his podcast for a large pile of money. Because in doing so he let someone else have control over his speech.
If this is a battle you want to fight, I might suggest starting with the book banning efforts by Republicans (the actual government) across many states that’s going on right now.
To my recollection, Rogan sold to Spotify with the express agreement that he would have complete control over content and publishing. It will be interesting to see what happens now.
> Yes, I agree with almost everything you said. However, the issue is that platforms are consolidated
There is no shortage of broadcast platforms. They are not consolidated. In the podcast space alone there are apple, Spotify, YouTube music, stitcher, and self-hosting. And then there are all the non-podcast broadcast modalities.
You seem to operate under the presumption that content and culture generally can only be created on major platforms. Nothing stops creators from finding other spaces to post their content. It's what sub-cultures have done pretty much throughout time -- find alternate spaces to explore ideas that might be outside of the mainstream.
It's not like Spotify is sending hit squads out to shake down artists that don't join the racket, or harass studios and sites that host content they disagree with.
There is a lot you can do with a big microphone, but perhaps the Internet isn't and never will be the utopia that people imagined it would be. In a different world where large tech companies were completely hands off and governments embraced a speech free for all, many people will still feel that they don't fit in mainstream spaces and will need to find another forum.
>You seem to operate under the presumption that content and culture generally can only be created on major platforms. Nothing stops creators from finding other spaces to post their content. It's what sub-cultures have done pretty much throughout time -- find alternate spaces to explore ideas that might be outside of the mainstream.
Yes, I agree, this used to be how things worked. Counter-culture movement appears, gains some followers, some leaders, gains momentum, and gradually or overnight breaks into the mainstream.
And this is precisely what happened here - a counter-culture movement tired with the establishment, a lot of followers, some leaders, some momentum - but the moment where change would actually happen is now impossible.
>alternate spaces
What alternate spaces? If Joe Rogan moves his podcast to Apple Music, they are going to ban him. If he had stayed on youtube, they would have removed his channel. If he creates his own app, it's going to be banned in the play store and app store. If he moves to a smaller, existing app, it's going to be protested and banned.
Yes, it's technically possible, there are some options. But they're all terrible. They are not a way to reach the mainstream.
> Is it not obvious that this would have been bad?
But what you're describing isn't some historical hypothetical nor is the current situation some brand-new phenomenon; it's literally how "content" has worked for more or less the entirety of human history. There in fact was no easily available gay content in the 1950s because society and culture demanded it not be available in the relatively small number of places available at the time where content could be consumed. Not only was gay content censored in the 1950s, but it was censored far more effectively than anything today since people had much more limited ways of obtaining content. Forget having to find a less popular podcast platform, if you were shut out of the handful of TV networks, radio stations, and newspapers, basically the only way you could have a voice is handing out leaflets on a street corner.
If the concern is that people be able to express unpopular ideas to a wide audience, we are in a far, far better place than we were at any point in history. Sure, there aren't unlimited platforms that allow you to easily reach millions and millions of people, but a few decades ago even wildly popular content would struggle to find that kind of audience and most things that were even mildly alternative would struggle to reach an audience at all.
I think the reason some people interpret the current state of affairs as some horrific free speech backsliding, even though all available evidence suggests people in general have more of a voice than ever, is that the voices that attract negative attention now are different. Historically it was usually content that was too "liberal" (for lack of a better word) that was censored, as with your gay content example. Now though, viewpoints associated with the more conservative[1] parts of society are suddenly facing unpopularity and it feels like a new thing simply because it involves people who aren't used to being on the receiving end of that kind of soft-censorship or whatever you want to call it.
My intent is not to take a specific position on whether such soft-censorship is good or bad, but if we're going to productively discuss the topic it seems like treating it as a brand new phenomenon is unlikely to get us to a useful place. In particular because in misdiagnosing the problem, we end up going down a path that's less about free expression and more about conservative ideas being entitled to a platform.
[1] Since I'm sure someone will object to this characterization, I realize Joe Rogan is generally not considered a conservative. However the views he's expressed that have caused the current Spotify trouble are definitely associated with conservatives in America.
I don't understand why people seem to be so befuddled by the concept that there can be legal actions which are not ethical or moral. I can legally buy a new puppy every month and give it to the pound. This is morally wrong, even despite agreeing that giving animals to the pound should be legal.
I see this same argument constantly, in nearly every discussion about a company doing anything bad. It's a meaningless point. Do you people posting things like this really not understand the distinction between right and legal? Or do you think moral considerations are beneath discussion?
I can be a proponent of free markets and against constructs that are anti competitive. When products are bundled (like with Microsoft’s Office subscriptions or Spotify), or when products have network effects (Facebook, YouTube, Twitter), or when they have a large number of users, or a large market cap, the free market already no longer exists. Choice becomes limited and barriers to entry become higher. These companies’ products start to become as important and influential as any public space or service. That’s where regulation is needed. And with all of the big tech platforms, they need to be regulated to not allow users to be denied or discriminated against due to their political views. The alternative is they are split up. But the free market definitely doesn’t exist right now.
Take a look at what happened with Parler. It was a rare successful challenger, although small by comparison, to big social media. Then AOC pressured a few companies to ban Parler and they all complied - whether to build favor with legislators that might regulate them or because it aligned with their politics. The claim that people can just build their own platform doesn’t work in a market this distorted.
As for your redefinition of censorship - I disagree. Legal or contractual allowance doesn’t change what it is. This is censorship.
>I don't really understand why anyone who claims to be a proponent of a free market economy has an issue with a private corporation deciding what type of content they want to broadcast.
What I don't understand is how this idea comes up every time something like this is discussed. I'm assuming that this does not receive convincing counter-arguments which is why I will attempt to do so here.
Almost everyone who believes in free markets (except maybe a very few libertarian anarchists) belives in regulation of the markets to restrict bad actors or unintended harmful side effects to the market or the people in general.
Being a proponent of free markets does not mean that you support the idea that market participants can break the laws for the sake of the markets. It also does not mean that one believes the existing laws and regulations are correct and sufficient. Everyone understands that it is an organic process where companies will test the regulations and regulatory bodies have to monitor and act on it constantly.
Some of it requires affected people discussing it and making the regulators and market participants know about the bad effects they feel so that something can be done about it, in one way or another.
I can imagine there being regulations forcing these content hosting platforms to not be able to take down content unless it is explicitly breaking the law as long as they are being compensated for it with no price discrimination. Similar regulations already apply to a lot of businesses.
> What I don't understand is how this idea comes up every time something like this is discussed. I'm assuming that this does not receive convincing counter-arguments which is why I will attempt to do so here.
I believe it's because there has not been a consistently applied general principle of free markets articulated, which the removal of episodes here violates.
The problem is not that private companies doing whatever they wish to do with his content. Spotify in normal times would have no incentives to delete those episodes. It seems the governments in US are enforcing censorship through private sector in the name of disinformation. I urge you to see the recent comments from White House press secy, congressional hearings and so on who insist private sector do more of the dirty work of censorship for them because they don’t like certain point of views. They know they can’t pass a bill that can stand the ground of taking out those contents without standing constitutional challenges.
I'm very confused as to how you think the government is involved with this issue. Is Neil Young a government official? Or is it empirically false to claim that Joe Rogan is actively peddling false information that is directly impacting people by way of, ya know, dying?
I think this is a simple example of the people with wallets using said wallets to indicate what they will and won't tolerate.
"White House urges Spotify to take further action on Joe Rogan: ‘More can be done’"
"White House press secretary Jen Psaki called on music and podcast streaming giant Spotify to do “more” in the fight against Covid-19 misinformation on Tuesday.
At her daily press briefing, President Joe Biden’s top spokeswoman was asked about a decision by the company to add disclaimers linking to Covid-19 information hubs to any piece of content that includes discussion of the pandemic, vaccines, or Covid-19 itself. She responded that the change was a good step, but that the company could take steps (if it wanted) to actively prohibit content that contained misinformation that experts have warned is prolonging the pandemic and leading to more deaths."
The company began to censor because people complained. Also, the federal government threatened them just days ago (I’m not sure if this sounds like a free market mechanic to me, what do you think?). People are free to call for censorship. People are also free to complain about the censorship. It’s part of the whole free market process.
What is the issue here? It sounds like you only like half the coin.
It was Joe's content to do with as he pleased, and his decision was to sell it and allow someone else to do with it as they pleased.
That's simple enough, but it's also simplistic because it assumes that property rights are the only thing we should care about.
Which value is more important - property rights (which depend on socialized services like justice and enforcement) or free speech (which thrive by removing regulation)?
You should ask Joe that. If Joe decided to sell he 100% had to have known that they will get to choose which parts of his content from the past to distribute until the end of their contract.
There's also another issue: the customer wanting to listen to those podcasts and who valued them as part of their Spotify subscription.
And that's not due to free market "those didn't were listened to enough, so we took them off" (that wasn't the case, and even if it was storage and distribution costs are negligible anyway, they could still keep them in perpetuity).
Instead that customer got shafted because "some" forced Spotify's hand.
> Which value is more important - property rights (which depend on socialized services like justice and enforcement) or free speech (which thrive by removing regulation)?
Don't ask us, ask J.R.. He remains free to return the 100 million to Spotify and broadcast his stupid crap elsewhere.
Uh, it is? A business contract isn't indentured servitude. You can always break a contract. There will be consequences, but they are civil consequences, most likely losing a bunch of money.
>It was Joe's content to do with as he pleased, and his decision was to sell it and allow someone else to do with it as they pleased.
And they did. They published those episodes.
Consistently with a free market, customers of Spotify should also be able to do with them as they pleased - listen to them or not, or even leave Spotify in protest.
Instead, some pressure groups, the media, and a couple of unrelated musicians forced Spotify to unpublish those.
How did anyone "force" Spotify to do anything? Various people put public pressure on Spotify and Spotify took the action that it presumably thought was optimal for its bottom line. Which companies do all the time.
By making it costly not to do it, not in a free market (vote with wallets) way, but in a "will hurt you with bad publicity, government pressure, etc" way. Forcing doesn't need to be a gun in the head of the CEO.
>Various people put public pressure on Spotify and Spotify took the action that it presumably thought was optimal for its bottom line. Which companies do all the time.
Yes, like corporations did when they censored works because of pressure groups, like Tipper Gore's, stuff that promoted "homosexuality" or "decadent" black music in the past, etc.
Doesn't mean it was left to the individual customers to decide, or that corporations deemed the works they sold as unprofitable in themselves (that is, not selling).
Because bad publicity is not a buy-not buy choice, and the decision to take the episodes down wasn't because they didn't have enough audience to be profitable.
There is a concept that we don't interfere with each others lives. If someone has views you don't like, and he never forces them on you, you gotta let it go. For example, a bunch of people chose Jesus, and an other bunch chose Mohammed. Long standing tradition so far was to accept this, and let it go, because alternative is a literal war. Violence. Nobody wants violence, so there are even laws that make it illegal to deny service because of one's religion. And it's not a little deal, for religious person it's about eternal life, so someone believing in wrong god is hugely offensive. Coming back to Spotify, there are a bunch of people who hold beliefs which are considered incorrect, and they are being marginalized and excluded from all avenues to express themselves. It's not Spotify, it's Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and pretty much everything else. When it's a single business that decides to exclude Christians, it's one story, but when it's an organized campaign, then we have a problem, because there will be war
"For example, a bunch of people chose Jesus, and an other bunch chose Mohammed. Long standing tradition so far was to accept this, and let it go, because alternative is a literal war."
The long-standing tradition has been war. The long-standing tradition has been war even among those that made the same choice but think that means something slightly different.
Before the Spotify deal, you would just see couple of Joe Rogan clips on YouTube and you have sat through maybe 3-4 entire podcasts. You don't care much about MMA or you don't think comedians are that important/hypeworthy as the JRE fandom would claim.
After the Spotify deal you just slowly stopped even seeing the clips because for some reason you just don't care to search for them and YouTube stopped recommending new clips.
You would hear about some hot takes about Joe Rogan vs something but you just don't find it worthwhile to investigate or frankly having an opinion about them.
Perhaps you do speak for the majority. I am a fairly heavy Podcast consumer (I run a lot and like to listen to them), and JRE is consistently among my top two (always a battle with the ever great Rich Roll) because of the sheer diversity of guests he has on. I don’t care for MMA or most of the comedians so I skip those but that’s fine because Rogan is so prolific that there will be something interesting in the next few days, max.
I find the controversy about JRE to be massively overhyped like the controversy over Howard Stern back in the day.
You think anyone actually looks or cares about the logo when a person has a massive following and a name? It's not logo that is the trademark of his brand, but the name. It's really stupid argument when the concept of people following celebrities has been a thing for years...
The idea that Rogan could "legitimize" anything is hilarious. He brings people like Alex Jones on his show, it's incredibly obvious that you shouldn't take everything you hear on the show seriously.
The problem is Rogan does legitimize many things for a lot of his listeners. I listened to that one COVID episode making news and it's hard not to think "this guy knows what he's talking about" and I have graduate degrees in epidemiology and microbiology. How is a lay person supposed to critically think about his guests and their views?
You gotta remember the average 'layperson' is just as smart as you. Do you need people worrying about what information you see or hear? It's like worrying people will be corrupted by South Park, gangster rap, etc., etc. There's plenty of crackpot doctors that make all sorts of claims- is it blasphemous to doubt that the Food Pyramid, and three meals a day, are the correct way to eat? People can handle their own shit.
There's a difference between not following the food pyramid and not getting vaccinated. It comes down to health of the public vs health of the individual. Someone's decision to intermittent fast doesn't affect anyone other than the individual. The decision not to vaccinate can affect many, many other people.
But, that's not a valid argument anymore since the vaccine is freely available and not so effective at stopping the spread. Anyway, people live in such different circumstances- some people may live in near isolation already, it's a jump to judgement to condemn someone without taking into account their situation. The largest spreaders are probably people with the most social connections, many of which are vaccinated- you could demonize people for all sorts of life choices that led to viral spread.
Everyone dies, and nearly every death could have been temporarily postponed had the person done something differently. Choosing how to live and how desperately to fight for those extra minutes is part of handling your own shit. Helping and caring for people makes life worth living, but if people don't want what's being offered that's their choice.
I agree it’s their choice; however, there are clearly better/worse choices and that’s what i mean by not handling their own shit.
Basically, I don’t think people (including myself) sit around and carefully consider the evidence or think critically about their own beliefs. For the most part, we digest what we hear and that’s that.
Which episode are you referring to? What specifically did "this guy" say that was illegitimate? For someone who's not a regular listener these vague allegations are quite annoying because it's impossible to tell whether you have a valid point or are just trying to push something for political reasons.
It was the talk with Peter McCullough. Two that stand out to me.
1. He stated that Japan began using ivermectin as first line treatment for COVID and it stopped their wave. This is easily discredited by visiting the official site for approved treatments and seeing that ivermectin is not on there (https://www.pmda.go.jp/english/about-pmda/0002.html).
2. He also made a claim this was a planned pandemic and points to table-top exercises by NIH and CDC two years prior to the pandemic that spoke about a coronavirus emerging from China and resulting in lockdowns. Is it really evidence? SARS.... a coronavirus emerged from China in 2003 and resulted in lockdowns in China. So was the CDC "planning" the pandemic or just working through previous experience. Additionally, I'm sure they've run exercises on vector borne viruses spreading into the US given climate change and the spread of various mosquito species into the Southern US (think Zika). I'm sure they run a ton of exercises, 99% of which don't come true... but one ends up happening and all of sudden that's proof this was all planned?
Two things that are easily explainable or discredited, but the average Joe isn't going to realize this. This whole "just asking questions" argument isn't great because it's not a debate, no one is fact checking these guests. Joe doesn't put up any creditable responses or rebuttals.
Alex Jones actually is a very serious performance artist who never breaks kayfabe, like that one old magician that Christian Bale's character in the Prestige respected for perpetually keeping up his act while in public. There is a lot of overlap with what Jones is doing and something like professional wrestling.
I don't much care for his style, but I think one day, maybe long after his death, people will give Jones the respect he deserves as an artist. A well-flowing rant is not an easy thing to improvise, and he is just a machine for generating them. To paraphrase a quote about jazz, you don't just wake up one morning, pick up a microphone and start raving about the new world order.
There is a real art to conspiracy theorizing. You can't just make things up. You have to take random true things and stitch them together into sort of framework that's wild and entertaining enough for your audience while still seeming plausible. You have to shade them in with sinister undertones. It's a sort of dark impressionism.
I remember seeing some of his earlier stuff before the modern info wars and its not exactly laid back but the production value was more of a radio show. Most people don't know but he played a raving conspiracist in A Scanner Darkly, but he basically became that charter on Info Wars. With some of the info from his ex-wife's interview, I think his public persona slowly started to take over his real identity as it grew.
A lot of what you say, I read it and say it's actually very consistent with him believing it.
People who suffer delusions often aren't stupid or even unconvincing. A lot of that intellectual effort you're describing, piecing together plausible details to justify their falsehood, can go into it. Someone I know who suffers these issues had a reputation in the family for being creative, a good storyteller... The hospitalizations and psychiatric diagnoses came later.
As someone who lived directly across the river from the Bohemian Grove for about a decade, I can tell you with certainty that the only thing he was right about is that it exists and its members are wealthy. There's nothing secret about the existence or timing of the gatherings, as they're discussed in the local paper. Jobs are advertised for caterers and cleanup crews. The people hired always return, just like any other summer camp type job.
This is a great point -- where can we find some INDEPENDENT FACT CHECKERS that happen to have the same political bias as me to dispute the above? I'm extremely uncomfortable that people have different opinions here.
A broken clock is right twice a day. And it's not like Epstein was some unknown figure before the Miami Herald reported on him, there were public 2008 articles about his jail time, which also mentioned his public figure ties[0].
He is 'right' about a lot of things, but what he does is take one tiny nugget of somewhat real information and then build on it and spin it in any way he wants.
If the listeners are adults of voting age, I see absolutely no problem with that. If you think that people are too stupid, I think we should talk about stripping their voting rights. If people are too stupid to consume misinformation aren't they too stupid to vote?
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments to HN? You've been doing it repeatedly, and we ban that sort of account because it's not what this site is for.
If you listen to joe rogans explanation, every single one of those uses of the word was taken out of context. He wasn’t using it in a racist manner, he was talking about someone’s use of the word. Even the Planet of the Apes reference was taken out of context. After he uses the term Planet of the Apes in the podcast, he immediately realized that it sounded racist and apologized because that wasn’t what he meant. And then goes on to say how he had an enjoyable experience. That all gets cut out to make him seem as racist as possible when he’s simply not racist at all.
Right. He invited people who abuse their credentials to spread vaccine misinformation. And when he invites actual experts, Rogan refuses to acknowledge counterarguments - the discussion devolves into "X, look it up" and when they look the up the stats, he just says "I don't know about that".
His podcast went from "(self-proclaimed) stupid man talks with people and gets them to explain stuff" to "(self-proclaimed) stupid man talks with people and gets them to explain stuff EXCEPT when it's about COVID he's suddenly 'done the research', usually invited 'guest experts' are anti-vaxxers AND when he invites real experts, he argues with them on irrelevant technicalities".
> And when he invites actual experts, Rogan refuses to acknowledge counterarguments - the discussion devolves into "X, look it up" and when they look the up the stats, he just says "I don't know about that".
You mean instances like this [1] where Rogan openly admits he's wrong? Even though, it turns out later, he wasn't totally wrong after all [2], and there's still some unexplored nuance that isn't captured by reductive soundbites?
Everything you've said reveals that you haven't actually watched Rogan's podcasts. "Arguing on irrelevant technicalities" is called "learning". All models are wrong, but some are useful, and questioning the boundaries of models so you understand their scope is important.
He admitted in this instance, so what? The issue is that he spent tens of episodes speaking about this crap with the fervor of someone who did actual research and his yes men (guests, team) just nodded their heads in agreement. Or he nodded his head as con men said total bullshit. The damage is already done.
Exactly. Here's a prime example: Rogan incorrectly stated on his show (as fact, not as his opinion or belief) that children who receive the vaccine have a 4-5x higher risk of getting myocarditis.
His guest, who has the correct info, claims that children have a much higher risk from getting myocarditis from COVID than getting it from the vaccine.
Rogan says "I don't think that's true, no no no, I don't think that's true. Let's look that up"
They look it up, Rogan is definitely in the wrong. The risk is 8x higher from COVID than the vaccine.
Does Rogan admit he's wrong? No, he states:
- "Well, that's not what I read before."
- "And anyway, where are we reading these things?" and then rambles nonsense.
This is a pretty transparent way of signaling to his audience that even in the face of actual data, you should just find some justification to believe the stupid conspiracy-level thing you want to keep believing.
I corrected it to "the person with the correct info" - it doesn't affect the point of what I wrote. I dislike Rogan because in listening to him, this is almost all he ever does: let conspiracy theorists and grifters speak on his show with no resistance (often even encouraging them), while providing this type of resistance to people with competence, then pretending he's some kind of neutral party providing a level playing field.
The problem is that "conspiracy theorists" and "grifters" in your mind are mainly just "people you disagree with". The problem is that not everybody agrees with that assessment, nor does that have any bearing on whether Rogan should be allowed to have such conversations.
Everyone complaining about Rogan's conversations is making the argument that they are harmful, but not a single one of these complaints is accompanied by any actual evidence of harm. Do you have any such evidence?
Only in a world where facts don't exist and truth is just a matter of opinion are conspiracy theorists and grifters simply people you disagree with.
And in any case, it doesn't have any bearing on the fact that Rogan claims to be some kind of innocent, open-minded guy who wants to talk to all kinds of people, when in fact he has clearly chosen a side on most issues and treats guests differenly in order to push people to that side.
The question is not whether facts exist, but whether you actually have all of the facts and thus are accurately applying those labels. In my experience, people rarely do apply them accurately, hence, this reduces to you just disagreeing with these people's opinions.
Which is all besides the point. If you think they are grifters and conspiracy theorists, you are free to simply not listen to the podcast. The real question here is whether anyone else should be able to listen to it, or whether it should be censored due to actual harm. I asked if you have actual evidence of such harm, and this is the only question that needs an answer.
But children are at very low risk of getting sick from covid19. According to David Zweig, a mainstream journalist, writing on Bari Weiss's substack, the risk of getting the virus in the <20 population is much smaller than the risk of myocarditis from the vaccine.
To the parent: please give an example of the vaccine misinformation being spread by Joe Rogan. Do you know who was actually promoting vaccine misinformation? Joe Biden & Kamala Harris, back when it was a "Trump vaccine" https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/campaign-press-rel...
To @p49k, you are a BSer. Joe Rogan apologized on twitter and even linked to The Guardian article where he got the "misinformation" regarding myocarditis. Here' a retweet by the guy that corrected him in the episode: https://twitter.com/joshzepps/status/1481834278271225864
> To people who think that
@joerogan is closed-minded or that he’d get pissed when I disagree with him, here’s Exhibit A. I love the guy
To the OP: you can rest assured that I watch most episodes with actual scientists and scholars, even the controversial scholars that sometimes spew nonsense. At no point did anyone deny that COVID was real, or deny that it was a serious problem.
At best, you can say they disagreed with the mainstream on how exactly severe it would be, who was most at risk from this danger, and how exactly to handle those risks. You know, entirely reasonable conversations that literally everyone around the country was having at the time, and probably still are having around the dining table.
I had honestly assumed after JP ended up nearly dying in a shady Russian "alt therapy" detox facility for his benzo addiction, at least partially due to the all-meat diet his crank daughter developed, the fervency of people suggesting him as some sort of "authority" would die down. Jokes on me I guess.
You seem to be missing or intentionally ignoring some additional facts:
* his addiction was caused by the increase in his prescribed dosage (so he could cope with his wife's cancer diagnosis and treatment - which was initially considered terminal by her doctors)
* he had to look for alternative treatments after his wife's cancer treatment has started working and he tried to cut back on his dosage, unsuccessfully (he tried to go practically cold turkey by his own admission, which made it worse, you can criticize him for not handling it properly)
* to my knowledge, he's still doing the all meat diet to this day, along with his daughter (since it keeps her symptom free after years of severe autoimmune disease)
Most opponents to Peterson don't know the first thing about him. It's quite sad because they're the same types that think COVID misinformation is something to worry about.
North American doctors like to overprescribe stuff like opioids or benzos. Wouldn't you think he is more of a crank if he denied his doctor's treatment?
uBlock Origin can block more than just ads. It has "annoyance" filters, premade lists for cookie popups, and a lot more.
On top of the lists, each user can block annoying things they dislike easily. Just right click the recommended videos section and automatically add it as a uBlock Origin rule.
I'm curious -- since monetization depends on ads, and youtubers also derive income from sponsored segments, doesn't a blocker deprive them of income? Or is the blocker undetected?
I mean, I pay for Youtube Premium, so they're getting paid for my views regardless.
The addon does the equivalent of scrub forward in the video, which... I don't think creators (and therefore the sponsors paying them) have any way of seeing that some segment of their video is being skipped. Everybody is happy!
I just don't need to see yet another outdated 2 minute segment for N*rdV*N or K*wi Co.
I fit pretty well into that group, though I stopped watching it before the move to Spotify. It originally felt like interesting guests talking about interesting things, but after a while I was hearing too much of Rogan's theories and perhaps some more conspiratorial content.
Yeah I only watch when he has a guest I'm interested in.
He has a great one with Elon Musk. Not many get Elon talking like that. The Babylon bee did a terrible job interviewing Musk. It showed that the host is important.
Change of platforms didn't bother me at all, I never watched him on YouTube, but his drift to the conspiratorial right that culminated in vaccine hesitancy eventually made listening unbearable.
the only Joe Rogan clips my friends and I watch, even as MMA fans, are the ones we watch for the "lulz" where he makes fun of and questions the anti-vaxxers. Oh those were days.. just two years ago.. when he was semi respectable. Now the Youtube algorithm doesn't even throw him out to me anymore.
When I heard of JRE many years ago, I said to myself, "do I care to hear the endless opinions of the former host of Fear Factor? Nope." And that was that, never even decided to give it a try with so much other potential content available.
The host is a broken record increasingly with an agenda who flies an "I'm a moron" disclaimer in the same breath as speaking authoritatively on whatever controversial fire he wishes to give more oxygen to.
At least nowadays most the interesting guests go on other podcasts when they're making the rounds, so JRE's unique value has greatly diminished.
I think I half agree with you. A lot of Jon's segments were just straight up mean -- well beyond playful mockery which made him hard to watch sometimes and he got away with it because of the comedian label. Where I disagree is that he was always open about his politics and knew that his show was "serious takes with light hearted delivery" and made it a point to not talk about topics from a position of ignorance. When you hear him talk off-camera it's clear that he really cares about getting it right and saying something intelligible through the jokes.
When I listen to Joe it's different, I'm not saying he couldn't run with the bit of "I don't know nuthin' about nuthin'" and come from a place of empathy and curiosity which would be cool. But what it is in practice is "I'm a moron and you shouldn't listen to what I think I don't know what I'm talking about buttttt and then speaks authoritatively on some politically charged topic he's supposedly ignorant of."
It works because it's true. The joke's on the audience that takes seriously what someone with a comedian background says after "I'm a comedian, but..."
> When I heard of JRE many years ago, I said to myself, "do I care to hear the endless opinions of the former host of Fear Factor? Nope." And that was that, never even decided to give it a try with so much other potential content available.
And the time commitment. I have a friend who's a big fan and kept pushing me to listen, but I just plain don't have the time to listen to a meandering 3 hour podcast, even if I was interested.
I have no data to back this up, but I think few people who listen to long podcasts sit down and pay attention solely to them for the entire duration. Personally I listen when I’m doing chores or commuting, and I constantly stop and pick it back up at a later time.
So how deeply informed by experts do you gauge that you are if the majority of what you read or hear is short-form? Do you think there's a cost to that that I guess you've decuded or defaulted to being an acceptable level?
>> ...but I just plain don't have the time to listen to a meandering 3 hour podcast, even if I was interested.
> So how deeply informed by experts do you gauge that you are if the majority of what you read or hear is short-form?
Huh? You're jumping to conclusions and, frankly, saying foolish things. In addition to just plain being wrong, there's literally no way you could validly infer anything about "the majority of what [I] read or hear" from what I wrote.
> You seemed to say you don't have time for long-form content? Did I misunderstand what you originally said?
That's not what I said, and you did misunderstand. What I did say is that I didn't have time for a "meandering 3 hour podcast," specifically referring to Rogan's.
Joe Rogan's meandering 3 hour podcast is clearly not the universe of "long-form content."
Gotcha. Well, could there not be benefit you're missing out on, of getting a better understanding of someone to see how they hold themselves while speaking on different topics?
For example, Jordan Peterson is very sharp and articulate on certain topics - but then I notice on certain topics where he hasn't had 15-20+ years of deep analysis/study on, his less polished views show, and is where he gets most of his flak, say on Bitcoin or climate change I personally find value in seeing this broad, meandering view of someone - it in part helps me understanding him as a role model better, likewise observing the growth/personal evolution process further.
What kind of 3-hour long content do you tolerate and that you don't consider to be meandering? Do you have a few examples you could share?
> Gotcha. Well, could there not be benefit you're missing out on, of getting a better understanding of someone to see how they hold themselves while speaking on different topics?
Of course, but there's nearly 8 billion people in the world, so you have to make choices.
Pretty reductionist. He made himself a success in more than one industry. And you haven’t listened to him. So what qualifies your opinion of him more than his opinion about anything?
I'm a regular listener, but he 'made himself a success in more than one industry' only if you count "TV presenter" and "radio presenter" as different industries. Most of his comedy specials are self-published.
I’m conflicted about him too, but the man tours with Dave Chapelle. He’s inarguably a successful comedian. He was a working MMA trainer. An actor in a sitcom. A TV presenter. The voice of the UFC. Host of one of the most popular podcasts.
He’s open to many criticisms, but dismissing his potential to have valid opinions because he was a TV presenter doesn’t seem like a strong argument. Especially if one is unwilling to listen to at least a few of his shows. I, myself, listened regularly 10 years ago (it was fun and funny) but can’t really stomach him anymore. I do check-in and listen to whole shows though. Clips almost never do his actual positions justice.
Also, we’re told to consult our doctors, etc. His controversial guests had PhDs. So, credentials alone don’t necessarily qualify people.. and that’s in either direction: having them (PhD credentialed guests), or not having them (Joe).
Joe, while no genius, is smarter than he gives himself credit for. He’s not touting ignorance, he is being humble and implying that his audience should think for themselves.
Imagine that, you were able to decide not to listen to a show you didn't care for without demanding that it be banned for everyone. You must teach the world these mysteries.
People don't like JRE because what he has to say but because he let's his guests speak. It's an an alternative to mainstream media's endless opinion stories and yelling how to live instead of reporting on things.
He's like Oprah in her peak:
He's disarming, humble, and has a knack for getting even the stiffest guests to open up. And some of the most fascinating guests are people you've never heard of.
Some would say Oprah is. She gained popularity initially hosting a "Jerry Springer" lite type of talk show in the 80s/90s. She's since given platforms to people like Dr Oz who's hawked pseudo-medicine, Marianne Williamson (former presidential candidate) who tries to sell alternative medicine and pseudo-spirituality.
It doesn't have to be a 1 to 1 comparison but there's plenty of people out there that would say along one or more dimensions that Oprah is no better, better, or the same as Rogan.
So for you the only people worth paying attention to are those who just have just jumped into well paid meaningful jobs and never had to work their way up from the bottom.
Worked at Mcdonalds.. not worth listening to, took a job as a cleaner out of school... don't waste my time. Only people with prestigious employment histories are worth the time of day.
I watched every UFC for many years and loved Rogan the jiu jitsu geek. the new radicalized Rogan I have no patience for. I dont need to be indoctrinated into gun nut conspiracy culture, I already live in the South.
Rogan was a proactive person conducting open research into the world around him. When proactive people investigate things and share their findings, it now only takes a few to dislike the findings, fuss, and have the findings removed.
To those that support this, I have 4 questions:
1. Is disincentivising sharing knowledge really good for the world?
2. Is it reasonable to expect 100% of inquiries be 100% accurate on the very first attempt?
3. Is it efficient for society to repeat the same research many times since previous investigations are scrubbed from public record?
4. Is it healthy for public discourse to be made less diverse and only concern 'safe' topics?
By your logic, would Ignaz Semmelweis, Giordano Bruno, or Nicolaus Copernicus be allowed on a mainstream platform today? And does that even matter to you?
Their ideas were so shocking they weren't only banned, but were made pariahs of, thrown into asylums, and burned.
The best we can do is hear different ideas with an open mind, and use our logic and discernment to come to our own judgements.
Since the quality of judgement differs greatly from person to person, it's dangerous to allow your flow of information to be filtered by corporate or governmental pressures; let alone by any single segment of society.
I think if you review the biographies of those three individuals, you will find that the stories of their persecutions are a lot more complex than that they were attacked for their novel ideas (though that is certainly an aspect). In most cases it wasn't their scientific ideas that were shocking or banned, but their political affiliations or religious stances. I think all three would have a platform today, because they provided evidence based and extensively reasoned positions. I see Rogan in rather the opposite way: he is contributing noise to the larger discussion by intentionally amplifying particular voices, without regard for whether or not they are in good faith, because they resonate with him or his perception of his audience. If Rogan were finding and amplifying voices that had evidence based arguments that contributed to overall understanding, I would be much more positively inclined.
Though all that said, I'm against deplatforming him.
I'm guessing not. Most of these people calling to censor him have never listened to a second of his show besides the sound bites the corporate media (who see him as competition even though he's never claimed to be a journalist) has played. Or they are articles out headlines. You can tell someone who's never watched him because they claim he's a right winger when really he's further left than they are.
Some of the things that are said are crazy. I listen to a lot of podcasts because I listen to them while I work. A lot of the news shows will just cut up parts of an interviews to make it more controversial than it really is. It is really disingenuous. However I don't think it is effectively anymore as anyone can get just find out for themselves.
>Or, for the last two years, Covid and only Covid.
like jim gaffigan, adam curry, carrot top, beeple, steven pinker, ron white, snoop dog, gilbert gottfried, chuck palahniuk... i mean, i could go on and on.
> Or, for the last two years, Covid and only Covid.
It's the biggest story in the world right now and if affecting everyone. You expect him to have a 3 hour conversation and not talk about covid once? And despite what your echo chambers tell you he doesn't only talk about covid.
> Or, for the last two years, Covid and only Covid.
Like every other TV show, news papers, radio program because it has been a persistent feature of our lives for almost 2 years now. How is this a criticism?
> And anyone who disagrees with him, including the world's leading experts are stupid.
I doubt he said this. I've seen clips where he has questioned orthodoxy surrounding things like mask mandates and vaccine mandates and the effectiveness therein. But I doubt he called people straight out of stupid because they disagree with him.
> Then he has Alex Jones on to say provocative things to boost his audience.
And? Are you saying he should get boring people on his show? That he shouldn't have popular people on there?
Alex Jones was made notorious because of his removal from many social media platforms.
Many people find Alex Jones entertaining. That doesn't mean they agree with his views. I find Alex Jones entertaining but I think many of his views are ridiculous.
> But yes, we will call this open research, and not being a shock jock somehow..
I didn't say it was open research. I was disputing the fact he is a shock jock. A shock jock goes out of their way to be controversial. Think Howard Stern in the 90s. Joe Rogan isn't isn't that.
The controversy around Joe Rogan is drummed up by his competition (tradition news and media) to ironically get views (the thing you were complaining about by him having Alex Jones on the show).
I have never listened to Rogan until a few days ago when this whole Spotify controversy popped up on my radar. Today I listened to an interview with a former Navy SEAL that had nothing to do with controversial issues, vaccines, etc. It was an interesting conversation about life, about learning to deal with balancing family and work (especially when your line of work involved heavy travel and military engagement in foreign lands). Didn't seem "alex jones"-like at all. Maybe best to just pick and choose which topics interest you, and ignore the controversies?
He's a shock jock in the sense that he absolutely knows that his program fuels any kind of outrage and he leans into that in an effort to keep his name relevant.
If you don't think he's aware that his show causes outrage in some form or another, and that he intentionally leans into that aspect in order to keep his profile high and the money flowing, akin to a shock jock, then I dunno what to tell you.
Obviously he’s aware his show upsets people who haven’t watched it, they keep trying to cancel him! I don’t think he really cares.
If someone's decided to be upset over Rogan, there’s not much he can, or should, do about it. The content is not shocking, it’s the intolerant overreaction that shocks the wannabe censors.
And I'm positing that he intentionally feeds the intolerant reaction because it keeps his profile raised and the revenue flowing. That, at a high level, makes him a shock jock.
The content - offensive/inaccurate or not - doesn't matter if the host knows their show causes outrage and chooses to lean into it.
Edit: He's different from other shock jocks, though, in that he's been smart enough to do this in a way that straddles the line - he doesn't look like a Limbaugh or a Stern and can say that he's "just doing research" and "only asking questions", while still intentionally profiting from outrage.
He interviews people with controversial opinions because there are other sides to stories that deserve to be highlighted.
People like him because he appears to genuinely mean that.
It is clear that if arguments like how often he said "cunt" or "nigger" on air get tossed into the debate of censoring his podcasts on covid-related matters, the pitchfork brigade is just out to get him. Not much coherency here.
It is a shorthand for “he editorializes for creating controversy, regardless the results of such, because that’s his business edge. That what allows him to get bigger rewards than others”.
What this thread cries about it Rogan and Spotify trying to minimize the downside of risk they have just suffered - what gives you bigger gain can also cause you bigger losses (and not that big here tbh)
I have watched a lot of longform podcasts, and pretty much most longform podcasts that are just two people talking have little to no editorialization of anything.
Joe Rogan Experience in particular is just him and some other dude/dudette talking for 3 hours straight.
I have never seen media more unscripted than these podcasts, except maybe live sports, but even those have egregious commercial breaks. Given how unscripted and extemporaneous his 3+ hour interviews are, I highly doubt he even has time to make them scripted, contrived and "editorialize(d) for creating controversy". What is he supposed to do prepare 3 hours for every 3 hours of podcasting he does, editorialize that 3 hours, and by the way he has another job as a comedian, so after that would he prepare for his comedy routine, and then by the time the runs his show and hangs out, he wakes up before he has any chance to sleep because he does like 3 of these interviews every week?
There is no editorialization, and if there were it would have to be extremely minimal. Trust me, just watch a few of them, entire episodes that is. Its just two people talking for 3 hours straight, maybe on drugs, maybe a little high, maybe just completely hammered, or completely sober. Its just two people talking, and he puts it up online so others can enjoy it as well, and you're trying to convince yourself he does it for a motive. You can do the exact same thing too, just talk with someone you find interesting for a few hours and put it up online, no need to be mad that he has a big audience.
Go ahead, Downvote me without providing an explanation. What does that even prove except that you have no grounds for your statement and are cowards afraid to even debate anonymously?
I could care less about losing internet points - but you should look at yourself in the mirror and see what it represents about who you are.
He's not doing research...he's having people on telling stories. So me his scientific data that is peer reviewed like the research he is going against.
Large numbers of laypeople mistaking Joe Rogan for a researcher and JRE as a venue for scientific discussion is not a sign of healthy public discourse. It is a sign of low levels of scientific engagement and scientific literacy among the public. Neil Postman warned us about this risk back in the 80s. He saw that the repackaging of serious subjects to fit the audiovisual medium would erode the boundaries between information and entertainment and create a dangerously misinformed public.
Joe Rogan is an entertainer. He is not a researcher, and the JRE is not a forum for scientific discussion. Mistaking entertainment for science is a strong sign that you need to deepen your engagement with scientific material outside of the audiovisual entertainment medium.
Exactly this. Joe Rogan entertaining anti-vax theories in the spirit of "open discourse" is not scientific discussion or a sign of healthy public discourse.
It's just Rogan knowing that he can peddle the line and bring in both the skeptics and the opposition and pretend that he is just promoting an open discussion. Or he is just ignorant, but I think the dude is smart enough to know that controversy drives up impressions and increases ad revenue and ultimately the success and dollars from his brand.
You don't have to pretend this is about truth or accuracy. We have countless examples, literally hundreds if not thousands of people in the MSM media deliberately lying and repeating provable false bullshit. Rachel Maddow pretended Trump was installed by Putin, she said Ivermectin ODs keep gunshot victims waiting outside of hospitals, she said the vaccines will stop the spread of the virus.
None of these things are even remotely true but she doesn't have to correct ANY of them.
The motivation behind those actions aren't a desperate attempts to seek truth in a chaotic environment, but people with trying to dominate others.
Spoken like somebody who hasn't even bothered to scroll through the list of episodes for even a cursory few seconds (which seems to be the norm among JRE critics). Do Snoop Dogg, Jewel, or Jim Gaffigan strike you as "fringe people"? Oliver Stone? Chuck Palhaniuk? Joe has stated ad nauseum that he invites guests that he finds to be interesting people. Why folks continue to try and reduce the breadth of guests to the 10% fringe is beyond me. Some combination of ideology and laziness, if I had to guess.
>Fauci is not going to pay the bills.
Is that why Disney just released a feature film documentary about him? Complete with red carpet gala and a monster Disney+ promotion?
1. Lots of correct scientific ideas were considered outright heretical (not just merely fringe), prior to mainstream acceptance. If you exclude 'fringe' ideas, you exclude the bad ones and the good ones.
2. People who get duped will simply stop listening. Example: This week I was duped by a youtuber, and will never rely on that source again [1].
Regarding 1, science makes zero progress on an entertainment show. The correct way to scientific redress is through publication of peer-reviewed literature. That's how you get mainstream acceptance in science. Science is not the consensus of opinions in the general public. Quite the contrary.
Come back to me when Nature censors something for ideological reasons.
Science and consensus being wrong sometimes doesn't mean we have to actively promote widely debunked crap. Or that we cannot boycott and complain about it.
I'd say we can even call for it to no longer be published. And if it can be shown to actively cause significant harm the legal system can respond.
I must assume you're being serious in my response, but this really does not feel like a genuine effort was put in when forming this take.
Science follows the scientific method. Pseudoscience, definitionally, is anything that identifies as science but does not follow the scientific method. A study is not needed to demonstrate that not following the scientific method lessens the usage of the scientific method. No one would bother peer reviewing or publishing trivial work. It is a waste of time.
> A study is not needed to demonstrate that not following the scientific method lessens the usage of the scientific method
Again, you're treating this as a given when it is anything but. Sure, pseudoscience means you're not doing science, but people promoting pseudoscience weren't necessarily going to being doing science instead / the people listening to them wouldn't necessarily be listening to science instead. In other words, science and pseudoscience are not a zero-sum game. In fact, the existence / publication of pseudoscience could actually galvanize "real" scientists to do more work than they otherwise would've to prove things scientifically. Not saying this is the case, but again, your assertion is far from a given.
Also, although we like to pretend that "science" is some concrete ideal, it is really not. For example, I mainly consider things to be scientific in line with Karl Popper's thinking re: falsifiability, which would cause me to lump a lot of "science" done today in the "not super sciency" category alongside some of the more clearly bunk pseudoscience.
yes but 99.99% of antivaxxer logic is easy to disprove with known science. I'm going with statistics on something as trivial as a podcast. Also I think people that don't like JR experience have two really good options, unsubscribe or simply don't listen to him. Why is everyone so negative? Lots of -good- people are on spotify, why concentrate on the negative? I just don't get why to the cancel culture types everything has to be cancelled or their world is completely out of balance and existence is awful.
> I just don't get why to the cancel culture types everything has to be cancelled or their world is completely out of balance and existence is awful.
I don't think I'd put this situation in the same bucket as cancel culture. The spread of Covid misinformation, especially anti-vaccination stuff, has a provable impact on the healthcare system which forces our governments to ask us to endure more restrictions than would be necessary if vaccine hesitancy wasn't a thing.
People like Rogan are sitting there complaining about government overreach while exacerbating the problem by spreading misinformation. As the distributor I think Spotify has an obligation to put a stop to it. I'm not saying he should be cancelled, but they need to tell him to get back to entertaining and to leave the medical advice to the experts in that field.
> has a provable impact on the healthcare system which forces our governments to ask us to endure more restrictions than would be necessary if vaccine hesitancy wasn't a thing
It's exactly this kind of misinformation that leads to people calling for censorship. You honestly think if there was MORE censorship there would be LESS vaccine hesitancy and the government would be implementing LESS mandates? That's dillusional and you have no evidence of it.
Censorship has a provable impact on people's trust. If you censor competing viewpoints then guess what? I'm less likely to believe yours. The only way I believe anything is if competing viewpoints are allowed. If they aren't then I don't believe you can defend your viewpoint. I don't just blindly trust anybody. You have to show evidence and prove yourself.
Joe Rogan would interview Dr. Fauci if he were up for it. He would even let Dr. Fauci talk and defend his position for 3-4 hours if he had that much to say.
I wouldn't call the guests on his show "fringe". In fact blanket calling all the hundreds if not thousands of people he had on his podcast fringe would require whomever said that to be someone who thinks through a groupthink/xenophobic mentality of believing the other side is evil.
>Joe Rogan would interview Dr. Fauci if he were up for it.
In one of this podcasts, JR said he was trying to find someone from the "other side" to debate (I think it was) Dr Malone. He said he couldn't, everyone turned him down. I think this part of the big disconnect in modern discourse; one side wants open discussion and debate, the other wants to censor and deplatform.
I doubt Anthony Fauci would be willing to go on the show, but I could see someone like US Surgeon General Vice Admiral Vivek Murthy willing to go on Rogan's show. I'd like to see it. However I suspect it would go a lot like it did when Sanjay Gupta made an appearance. I don't think it was a good look for Gupta.
You missed my point completely. It is only conservatives that pretend they do not cancel people. They constantly cancel people. Maybe even more than liberals.
Might I ask what "fringe people" are? I've watched his podcast and he certainly has a whole spectrum of people on. He may have his opinions and biases, but a person is allowed that right? Who are these fringe people, people who have different opinions from you? From the main stream media?
How does that make any sense? By definition fringe people are going to attract a fringe audience. If he wants more engagement the guests should be more like when he had Elon Musk on smoking weed.
That's not by definition at all. A view that is fringe in a scientific or medical context can still have strong appeal to a non-scientific and non-medical audience. In Joe's case, platforming fringe views in addition to his regular guests creates a compelling sense among his listeners that they are being given a fair and balanced presentation and the freedom to make up their own minds.
I think my point stands regardless – if he is just trying to drive engagement there are clearly better guests to have on than people on the fringes of the medical community.
> Rogan was a proactive person conducting open research into the world around him.
What kind of research does he do? I've never seen more than the odd clip, but I was under the impression he's just like all other entertainers that interview guests and engage in fairly shallow conversation about various topics.
A lot of people I know would tell you they didn't feel really competent in their (professional) field until they were working for 5 years which happens to align with the magic 10k hours cited as being the requirement to become an expert. Even if Rogan spends a whole year researching a topic that's still only 1/5th of what I'd consider the point where someone's qualified enough to speak publicly on a subject.
When I don't know something about a topic I default to trusting the people who've worked in the field for their entire life.
Here's a great example from tech that I think aligns well with a lot of the controversy we've seen over the last few years...
Years ago there used to be this huge debate about ZFS and a lack of ECC RAM combining to cause a "scrub of death" that would obliterate your data. The idea started on the TrueNAS (FreeNAS) forums [1]. That debate raged for ages and is a perfect example of how uninformed people shouting very loudly can have an outsized impact on public discourse. You don't have to take my word for it either. Here's a forum thread [2] where `ahrens` [3], the co-creator of ZFS, says the "scrub of death" isn't a thing and that non-ECC RAM with ZFS gives you better guarantees than a lot of other filesystems will with non-ECC RAM.
His response is followed by people telling him he's wrong and continuing the debate.
I have a couple questions for you if you're willing to answer. Would you believe the creator of that thread in the TrueNAS forum or the creator of ZFS when they're giving you conflicting information? If you would believe the creator of ZFS in the above scenario, why do you think some people trust celebrities like Rogan over a medical expert like Fauci or, literally, the creators of vaccines?
> why do you think some people trust celebrities like Rogan over a medical expert like Fauci or, literally, the creators of vaccines?
You seem to be somewhat misinformed. It's not what Joe Rogan says that is under fire, it's what his guests say. Rogan mostly says stuff like "wow" and lets his guests speak.
To make things even more interesting, this latest drama is because he had Robert Malone [1] as a guest on his show. Malone is not just a doctor, but he is also a scientist responsible for the early work on making mRNA vaccines possible. That's what's extra crazy about all of this. It's not even some random comedian talking out of his comfort zone. The guest is one of the most informed people about mRNA in the world. The guy literally made his career on mRNA. Yet what he says does not align with the most widely propagated take, so he must be silenced.
I personally don't know enough about mRNA to have a say, but what I can safely assume is that Malone knows more about mRNA than most people who are saying he is wrong.
"I personally don't know enough about mRNA to have a say, but what I can safely assume is that Malone knows more about mRNA than most people who are saying he is wrong."
Why can you safely assume that? Further, I'm less concerned about what 'most people' are saying about Malone, but more interested in what his equally credentialled peers are saying, which is that he's full of shit.
Based on his achievements. His achievements are extremely rare. Even most MDs (medical doctors) don't have groundbreaking research to their name, doubly so on specifically the topic they're discussing.
> more interested in what his equally credentialled peers are saying, which is that he's full of shit.
That interests me the most too. Unfortunately all the coverage I've seen thus far doesn't have any takes by equally credentialled peers - that is peers who have spent decades researching mRNA. Most coverage doesn't even have takes by MDs, nevermind equally credentialled.
Your comment and the one you linked exhibit a pattern I have noticed among people who mistake infotainment for science. There is no attention paid to the actual claims, their veracity or scientific validity. Instead there is an exclusive focus on individual personalities, appeals to authority and storytelling. It's the brave mRNA pioneer-cum-renegade standing up to the establishment like a modern Galileo. He could be saying the Earth is flat and it wouldn't matter.
But the distinguishing feature of great scientific figures who challenged the establishment and overturned accepted wisdom is that they were actually right. Semmelweis was right about hand washing. Galileo and Copernicus were right about heliocentrism. So is Malone right that athletes are dropping dead in droves from vaccination? That vaccines might actually make COVID-19 infections worse? That vaccine safety research is false and that the spike protein is highly toxic? Do you personally believe these things?
> people who mistake infotainment for science. There is no attention paid to the actual claims
More than anything, this is what I generally promote - focus on the actual claims. I personally try really hard to ignore someone's character and address their core points instead. I think this is generally a good principle. Although it can be exhausting on random non-HN internet discussion boards, where nuanced replies and principle of charity are drowned by zero effort parroting.
That is unfortunately a common theme with most reporting I've seen of this drama. The stories contain vague statements like "misinformation about covid" but no actual claims are pointed out and then refuted. It's like these outlets are so afraid of this misinformation that they think even mentioning these claims would be harmful. The less charitable interpretation would of course be that most outlet reporters haven't even watched the podcast.
> there is an exclusive focus on individual personalities, appeals to authority and storytelling
This is a strategy heavily promoted by pro-vax tribes. Don't listen to random influencers, listen to doctors. It's also something that has been used heavily against Joe Rogan. Criticism that he has non-experts on the show talking outside of their expertise. Now when Joe Rogan got an actual MD on his show, whose life work has extreme relevance to covid - well the appeal to authority story has suddenly vanished. Most coverage of this drama doesn't list Malone's achievements at all, probably because then they couldn't get away with just handwaving away what he says. Most stories focus on Joe Rogan personally, as if he's the one making the statements.
> So is Malone right [? ...] Do you personally believe these things?
He's probably right about some things like corners being cut against protocol with the Pfizer approval. He's probably wrong about vaccines making infections worse. However I don't really have strong opinions on the points Malone is making. I'm participating in this discussion because of the bigger picture.
What I take issue with is the manufactured and/or sloppy coverage of this. Malone's achievements shouldn't be pushed under the rug. His expertise shouldn't be hidden. If he has gone crazy in old age, so be it. However that case should then be made in strength. Instead the narrative is that Joe Rogan spreads misinformation and Malone is just another garden variety conspiracy nut.
> More than anything, this is what I generally promote - focus on the actual claims
Is it? Because your reply is again filled with pathos, tribalism and narrativization.
The Malone controversy really has little to do with heroes, villains and victims. It's a very straightforward matter: he used his profile to share wildly unscientific claims, hoax videos and delusional "mass formation psychosis" theories to the public. Because this contributes to an existing public health crisis it has invited scrutiny of his person and of platforms that host his content. Cause and effect. Simple stuff.
> Is it? Because your reply is again filled with pathos, tribalism and narrativization.
I refute these.
Where is the pathos? There certainly wasn't any intent of emotional appeal, I never do that. Would be good to know which part of my comment triggered an emotional response.
What tribalism? Mentioning that HN has better commentators or mentioning that pro-vax tribes exist? Please do let me know, what part of my comment constitutes tribalism.
As for narrativization, well this is a HN comment not an Excel sheet. All comments here are narratives, including yours. So not sure what to make of that. Seems like a red herring.
Malone received criticism for propagating COVID-19 misinformation, including making claims about the toxicity of spike proteins generated by some COVID-19 vaccines;[4][19][6][31] using interviews on mass media to popularize medication with ivermectin;[32] and tweeting a study by others questioning vaccine safety that was later retracted.[4] He said that LinkedIn temporarily suspended his account over a post stating that the Chairman of the Thomson Reuters Foundation was also a board member at Pfizer, and other posts questioning the efficacy of some COVID-19 vaccines.[33][34] Malone has also falsely claimed that the Pfizer–BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines could worsen COVID-19 infections,[1] and that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had not granted full approval to the Pfizer vaccine in August 2021.[35] In November 2021, Malone shared a deceptive video on Twitter that falsely linked athlete deaths to COVID-19 vaccines. In particular, the video suggested that Jake West, a 17-year-old Indiana high school football player who died of sudden cardiac arrest, had died from COVID-19 vaccination. However, West died in 2013 from an undiagnosed heart condition. Malone deleted the video from his Twitter account after receiving a cease-and-desist letter from West's family. Malone later said on Twitter that he did not know the video was doctored.[36] On December 29, 2021, Twitter permanently suspended Malone from its platform, citing "repeated violations of our COVID-19 misinformation policy",[37][38] after he shared on that platform a video about supposed harmful effects of the Pfizer vaccine.[39][40]
On December 30, 2021, Malone claimed on the The Joe Rogan Experience podcast that something called "mass formation psychosis" was developing in American society in its reaction to COVID-19 just as during the rise of Nazi Germany.[41][42] The term mass formation psychosis isn't found in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, is not based on factual medical information, and is described by Steve Reicher, a professor of social psychology at the University of St Andrews, as "more metaphor than science, more ideology than fact."[43] Clips of the podcast episode were removed by YouTube from their platform for violating the site's Community Guidelines.[42] 270 physicians, scientists, academics, nurses and students wrote an open letter to Spotify complaining about the content of the podcast.[44][45] On January 3, 2022, Congressman Troy Nehls entered a full transcript[2][46] of The Joe Rogan Experience interview with Malone into the Congressional Record in order to circumvent what he said was censorship by social media.[2][47]
On January 23, 2022, Malone spoke at an anti-vaccine and anti-vaccine mandate rally in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.[36][48]
> You seem to be somewhat misinformed. It's not what Joe Rogan says that is under fire, it's what his guests say. Rogan mostly says stuff like "wow" and lets his guests speak.
Rogan is providing his guests with a massive platform that can be used to disseminate information, so I think he has a responsibility to make sure his guests aren't spreading misinformation. Imagine if a popular influencer with a young fanbase had a guest on that swore eating Tide Pods was good for your health. Would you think a simple "wow" would be enough to absolve that influencer of responsibility for the message being disseminated?
> I personally don't know enough about mRNA to have a say, but what I can safely assume is that Malone knows more about mRNA than most people who are saying he is wrong.
From what I can find he contributed one building block 30 years ago. There's been 3 decades of research and development involving hundreds or thousands of people since then. Was he involved in the space at all in the last 2 decades prior to Covid? I tried to find if he kept up with the field, but search results are saturated with the latest controversy.
The best I could do for myself to understand his claims was a fact check website that references the sources that Malone was citing on Rogan's podcast [1]. The thing that really jumps out at me is that he's willing to use preprint sources that haven't been peer reviewed, so they haven't undergone any scrutiny or survived any criticism. Some of the authors of the sources even say he's misinterpreting or misrepresenting the results.
Malone:
> “[T]here is signs in some data […] from Denmark, among other places of negative efficacy against Omicron as a function of the number of vaccinations up to three”
vs:
> The first author of the preprint, medical statistician and epidemiologist Christian Holm Hansen, explained to Health Feedback that the claim misrepresented their results. He said that this effect often arises due to biases, which “are quite common in VE estimation from observational studies based on population data.” These biases include potential differences in detection, testing, or behavior between vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals.
So am I supposed to believe Malone or the author of the paper that Malone is citing? One of them is actively working on the topic as their day job / career and the other is touring around doing talk shows like a celebrity. Do you think Malone knows more about a paper written by Christian Holm Hansen than Christian Holm Hansen does?
Malone isn't doing any original research from what I could find, so if the author of work he's citing refutes him, I think that's adequate to call it misinformation or misrepresentation. And I think that harsh label is warranted because he never comes back around to correct the record. If Malone was concerned about his long term credibility and corrected himself then I would call it a misunderstanding.
I've seen Malone giving information compared to Fauci giving information and that's not a reasonable comparison IMO. At best Malone is a small cog in a big machine while Fauci is the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Malone is presenting an individual opinion while Fauci is presenting a consensus opinion that's expected to be the aggregate of the entire industry.
Also, Rogan calling Malone "the inventor of mRNA" is a bit of an embellishment. That's like having Tim Paterson on a podcast and calling him "the inventor of MS Azure" because he wrote DOS 30 years prior.
I'll finish by saying I think the politicization is terrible for us long term. In Canada we have some provinces with strict lockdown measures and some with none. The ones with strict measures are collecting detailed stats to substantiate their viewpoint and some of the provinces without are planning to de-emphasize stat collection.
That's a big loss for everyone because we're going to miss out on an opportunity to analyze the effectiveness of strict social restrictions vs none. The problem is that it's a political death sentence for the anti-lockdown choice if the data says they were wrong, so the solution is to hide the truth even if it could end up supporting that position.
We're also at risk of losing out on the highest value health related incident post-mortem in the history of mankind because the politicization will prevent everyone involved from being honest and upfront about things that worked, things that didn't work, mistakes that were made, improvements that could be made in the future, etc..
So, in the context of politicizing the topic, I think entertainers like Rogan are doing a quite a bit of harm.
One of the ironic things here is that it’s pitted Spotify’s brand as a music company against their brand as a podcast company. For people originally drawn to Spotify as a music service the departure of even a few icons all of a sudden makes Apple Music very attractive.
I switched from Spotify to Apple Music fairly recently and I am still shocked on the daily how poorly built Apple Music is. In the several years I subscribed to Spotify I never had issues of content not loading or choppiness in the playback, but with Apple Music it is nearly every day.
The only thing Apple Music has going for it over Spotify (in my opinion) is that the recommendations are easily 10x better for discovering new content.
> The only thing Apple Music has going for it over Spotify (in my opinion) is that the recommendations are easily 10x better for discovering new content.
Thank you! I spent the last few years working on improving the quality of those recommendations!
I’m ex-Apple, so that may help, but I was once told it’s fine to talk about anything that is in a job posting.
People are working on almost everything, so I don’t feel like I’m giving away anything shocking. Apple is a big place, though. My experience may not be the same as others.
Amazing - you should be proud of your team’s work! On Spotify, my experience was that it’s recommendation system would simply recommend songs from the same bands I’ve already told it that I like. But Apple will dig up some obscure band I’d never heard of and - POW! - it would be awesome and a new favourite band.
The recommendation system alone is what keeps me looking past all the errors with the software being unable to play a song on demand on a regular basis.
Very strange. I would probably pay my Spotify subscription just for the recommendation service.
Did you use Discover Weekly actively? Did you share your account with children, at parties, etc.?
I'm always puzzled by how Spotify recommendations seem to be so hit and miss for people. I wonder if it could be related to the type of music one listens to.
> Did you share your account with children, at parties, etc.?
I play my son music using my phone. Spotify bury the "Private Session" toggle deep in the settings, and arbitrarily turn it off again after a while. If this damages Spotify's recommendations, then it's entirely their doing.
Can you tell me more? Last I tried (a number of years ago), the recommendations were completely mainstream and uninteresting, whereas Discover Weekly routinely dredged up almost-unknown artists that quickly turned into favorites. Can Apple Music do something similar today? Does it use a similar approach to Spotify or is it curated somehow?
Great job on the recommendations, definitely my favorite part.
What is youpinoon in way Music.app is so clunky still? For example when perusing music, if you click on something there is no way to go back to what you were just looking at!
It's such a cool thing to get to work on, and be paid for, and something I imagine everyone working on actually uses. This is not true of a lot of software we all write. So I don't understand why the app is so bad in 100 tiny little ways
I wasn't really involved in the client, so I probably don't have much insight to share in that regard.
It was really special to what I had been working on in a keynote or read articles/comments specifically addressing a feature, but it isn't always gravy. So many news reports/articles/comments are just so far off from what is really happening going on. And many comments are tough to hear, but true as well. Still overall it was a positive and threads like this are really something special. It means a lot to have our work appreciated and think that can be missing from the modern software development experience.
I only tried music streaming last year and started with Apple Music and was shocked at how outright broken the platform is. Like I’d press play and a different song on the page would play. Or it would start lagging out really bad until I reload the page.
Shocked and how poor apple did here considering I haven’t had issues with any other product from them.
I'm in the same boat, but one extra thing I found that Apple Music does better is sound quality. I'm not an audiophile by any means, but even I noticed immediately that music sounded _much_ better, like, very noticeably.
But yeah, aside from that, it's kind of a miserable experience. Hard to believe it's _still_ so bad.
I actually find apple music discovery to be far worse for my tastes than Spotify. But nothing even comes close to the SoundCloud Weekly and SoundCloud Upload discovery playlists. I've found such incredible indie musicians through those playlists. I can't rave enough about them.
YouTube music is by far the best about recommendations IME. Shame about the app and smart device integration, though - often telling a speaker to play music on the TV will just have audio and not video, for example.
Wow I moved from Spotify to Apple about… 6 months ago? My experience has been better than Spotify. Searching in the olddddd Spotify apple (pre electron days) worked so well. But then they broke it when moving to electron and never fixed it.
I switched to Deezer recently and my favorite thing is that it actually has a usable, full-featured web version that's not full of bloat -- and, more importantly, allows lossless music playback in browser. The web UI works so well that I never even bothered to install the desktop app, unlike other services I've used in the past. They definitely deserve a shout-out.
As a long time Google Music user I don't understand why people never mention them. It's Youtube Music now. For 118SEK I get pretty much the same music as any other streaming service, PLUS all of youtube's content without ads, useful on chromecast. I realize you can get rid of the ads if you have a computer hooked up to your monitor but I really like the chromecast.
I think Spotify is getting onto thin ice. I subscribed to Spotify because I want to stream music, and I like that the bands I listen to get a bit of money.
But when I hear that they are paying $100M to some controversial US podcaster (before Neil Young left Spotify I have never heard of Joe Rogan), I'm thinking, this isn't what I signed up for. I want my money to go towards German indie bands, not rich American celebrities.
I don't know what the majority of Spotify listeners care about, but for my part I know I couldn't care less about podcasts, I just want to listen to music.
I don't think they're on thin ice. Remember when people were boycotting Netflix over Cuties? Their stock prices recovered and everyone forgot. People have also boycotted YouTube or pulled their ads. These things just blow over.
This feels different to me. Netflix has a unique library of shows. They have content you can't get elsewhere. Spotify doesn't, when it comes to music (other then their Spotify Sessions, but it's not much). I can easily switch to a different service (already did) and get the same content. My new platform pays artists more, and works well enough. I'm not sure Spotify has anything special enough to draw music fans who left back.
The budget of the film Cuties was under $1M, maybe a small bit more with Netflix's marketing involvement after the initial release (Netflix bought the rights to a worldwide release outside of France). Spotify just directly wiped tens of millions of dollars off their service and likely suffered more long-term lost subscriptions since people have already switched to YT Music or Apple Music; anyone that dropped Netflix had probably resubscribed by the time Squid Game was released.
I signed up for the music, or more specifically, the algorithmic recommendations.
With Spotify allowing commercial interests to influence recommendations (artists can choose to take a drop in royalty income to prioritize their music in recommendations) and pushing podcasts in my face all the time when I open the app, to the detriment of recommendations... I've decided to run my own Jellyfin server instead.
Like you, this isn't what I signed up for. It's sad that I can't just pay a monthly fee for a good music app -- even Apple Music, Tidal, Deezer, etc. are all crappy music apps.
I was already primed to leave Spotify because of that very tension. I never had any desire to play music and podcasts in the same app: I swap between them pretty fluidly and the separate apps keep everything in context.
So the second that the podcast side started to interfere with the music side in the slightest, I dipped.
I don't think so I think this has just blown up in the twitterverse and will be over in a couple of weeks because the twitterverse is only important in the short term and spotify knows that.
Predictably, people break out the C-word. Every business decides what they sell and what they don't. Do they also complain about censorship and shout at the manager of a shoe store for not selling books? Spotify decided they don't want to sell those episodes of JR. That's not censorship, it's business, and it's very different than if it's done by the government.
> Do they also complain about censorship and shout at the manager of a shoe store for not selling books?
No. Censorship is the suppression of speech.
If you don't sell a book because you don't think it fits your store, or you don't think it's profitable, that's not censorship.
But if you refuse to carry a book SPECIFICALLY because you don't like the message, then that IS censorship.
Some forms of censorship are illegal, and some forms are legally required. But that doesn't mean that it's not censorship just because you agree with that's being censored.
I really don't know if a HN thread is the place for like an abstract take, but I really dislike these "absolutist" definitions. You take a high-impact, emotionally charged word with a well defined meaning in its cultural context, rip it out of that context, apply the naive detached dictionary definition, and then end run around and shove it back into that high-impact context to your rhetorical benefit, where it would never be used naturally, because it "follows" from the naive definition.
In this case, sure, "censorship" is literally the suppression of speech but it's a much bigger idea than that. It's this huge institutional power dynamic. And so if you want to define it as something smaller where say white people getting in trouble for saying the n word is censorship then that's fine but then the word loses all the impact because if that's what you consider censorship then almost everyone is going to be in favor of it to some degree. It's not this inherently evil dystopian thing anymore. But then rhetorically you rely that fact that impact is "sticky" so when you say "well this thing I don't like is censorship oOoOoOooO and my line of reasoning supports that" you're kind of betting that the reader doesn't take notice that in the universe you've constructed censorship is pretty benign.
Taken broadly always was the commonly used definition of censorship, and progressives understood that until they got the power to censor what they don’t like through their economic power.
Then they redefined censorship to be only if the government does it. Thats having your cake and eating it too.
That just dilutes the definition to the point of being meaningless. You will find very few bookstores with a section devoted to extremist treatises and manifestos. That is not censorship in any conventional sense of the word.
If I owned I book store, I would not sell “The Turner Diaries” (unless maybe if I knew that the person who wanted to buy it was a researcher studying racist literature). Even if it were profitable, I wouldn’t want to make money from helping spread that garbage.
If you consider that censorship, then you’ve gone a long way toward convincing me that your definition of censorship is an OK thing to do.
No, it most certainly is censorship. It is also business. Those two things aren't mutually exclusive. I'd also note that it is completely legal, but that I (personally) think that such practices are harmful.
> shout at the manager of a shoe store for not selling books?
A shoe store? That's not a good analogy. I wouldn't complain that Spotify doesn't offer downloads of popular software, would I?
Would people complain if Barnes & Noble suddenly pulled a number of "controversial" books from their shelves after public outcry?
Do you believe censorship is wrong all cases? What about a biologist providing instructions on how to add lethal mutations to viruses? Or a physicist giving detailed instructions about how to construct dirty nuclear bombs? There is certain knowledge that is unsafe to be widely disseminated, would you be against the censorship of said content?
I mention this because arguably, allowing covid to proliferate means thousands of deaths, long COVID syndrome, and potential for new mutations to arise. These misinformed hucksters are largely out to make their own names and make money, not to educate or because their carefully chosen speech is their "right". Should we allow any financially motivated snake oil salesmen to spew whatever trash he likes into our society, even if it kills one thousand people indirectly?
You just gave two very poor examples. Anyone who have any ability to add lethal mutation are probably biologists anyway. And instructions to construct nuclear bombs are probably on somewhere on the Internet anyway, but I’m not going to worry at all, it is close to impossible to buy the raw materials without some sorts of licenses.
Looked up the definition of censorship: the suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, news, etc. that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security.
Some definitions have narrowed it's purposes to just "offensive", this one was slightly broader.
Given this meaning, Spotify's action is on the line of security and safety. JRE is taking heat for misinformation about covid, specifically about vaccines and alternative treatments, as well as his history of having platformed Alex Jones.
I'd say preventing snake oil salesmen from selling their products in your market due to safety concerns is a valid employment of censorship. People could actually die due to believing some of these extreme guests. Obviously, legally there is zero problem here since a private company can do as it wishes, freedom of speech doesn't give the freedom to dictate to companies what they must sell.
In Canada your freedom of speech as a broadcaster or entertainer is limited to non-harmful, intentionally
ignorant, or violence provoking language. So it’s not censorship here to take someone off the radio for spreading slander and lies that could get someone hurt, like Joe has been on his podcast. It’s considered protecting others safety and our charter of rights.
Stopping someone from spreading ignorance and hate is not censorship. That’s not what one imagines when they think of censorship. This is not stopping someone from saying things arbitrarily.
Predictably, people who are fine with censorship try to frame it as just business. A shoe store not selling books is your argument? Really? Spotify didn't decide they don't want to offer those episodes, they decided to do so after media started labelling Rogan as spreading misinformation and accused him of all the popular isms. Music has discretionary labels, removing it because its message is inconvenient to you is a different thing. This is reactionary and a really bad look for Spotify.
I’m struggling to have sympathy with anyone involved in this. Podcasting has always felt like a resurgence of the “original web” spirit to me: anyone can upload, anywhere. All you need is an RSS feed and anyone can subscribe.
Then Spotify came busting in and decided that the open podcasting platform is obsolete and paid Joe Rogan $100 million for exclusive distribution of his content. So they’ve dug their own grave here.
Rogan has too. He didn’t have to take the deal that removed his podcast from open distribution and put it under corporate control. But he did. And he paved the way for many others to go down the same path and erode the open podcasting ecosystem. If he hadn’t done it he’d have none of these problems. So he’s dug his own grave too.
I wish both parties nothing but the best in digging their way out of the mess they created for themselves.
It's likely Rogan would have been banned from YouTube and Apple Podcasts had he not moved to Spotify. He could have moved to tiny platforms like Odysee or Rokfin that would likely have poor retention rates, or just relied on people adding his URL manually to Apple Podcasts, but come on. Nobody would do that.
The "death of the open web" problem isn't creators somehow consistently choosing to empower companies that keep hurting them. Users are doing that, and creators follow.
Imagine Tim Ferriss gets banned from all "non-open web" platforms today: podcast app indexes, Google Search, Twitter, Facebook, Spotify. We'll imagine he gets banned for zero reason: did nothing wrong, did nothing different, isn't any intrinsically less relevant or popular than he was yesterday. What's left is his website (if you remember the URL), and newsletter if you're already subscribed. You can add his podcast URL to your podcast app, but his podcast doesn't appear in Search. How much of his reach does he lose, overnight? 50%? 75%?
Google Search isn't the "open web", and if they don't list you, you don't exist. How can one creator fix that?
> or just relied on people adding his URL manually to Apple Podcasts, but come on. Nobody would do that.
You mean by clicking a link on his website?
How likely is it that google would block joe rogan's website from search results for joe rogan?
I feel like people keep dodging a central issue here - joe rogan is not an independent being silenced on the open web by centralized platforms - he effectively sold the show to one of the platforms. They decide what happens with it (specifics of the terms of their agreement notwithstanding).
this isn't the first controversial audio programming on the internet, but it is the first one that is effectively owned by one of the listening platforms that actually has the power to do something without wading into unfathomably complicated waters, if they want to. that they (until today?) seemed not to want to - or to pretend that their relationship to the show is the same as twitter's relationship to me - is what is keeping this in the news.
To be 100% clear - it's not obvious to me what anyone should do in this case; joe, spotify, etc. I have my own opinions about the cost / benefit on the content but I also know enough to expect that things are probably more complicated than the popular narrative I have access to.
What I do know for sure is that Joe would have more control of his show's destiny, not less, if he had decided to keep distributing in a way that did not give a single entity complete control over whether a given piece of content could be distributed at all.
> or just relied on people adding his URL manually to Apple Podcasts, but come on. Nobody would do that
But why would nobody do that? How hard is it? Maybe it's too much trouble for something you don't care about, but for a content you enjoy, doing one copy-paste isn't very difficult?
Personally I resent Spotify for the whole move to podcasts.
There is still so much to do with music (streaming quality, music videos, lyrics, chords...)
Instead they choose to publish recordings of guys talking -- not experts in any subject, but random guys who are pretty ignorant of everything, and who, because they don't know anything, tend to have a very political conversation. This isn't art. This is just another way of wasting time.
As a result, Spotify is now in the business of policing content. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
> There is still so much to do with music (streaming quality, music videos, lyrics, chords...)
Correct, but:
1. Everyone wants to be the Netflix of podcasts.
2. It's premium advertising real estate. The ad formats you can chuck into a podcast have higher CPM.
Caveat re 2.: I'm not sure how much advertising contributes to Spotify revenue, so take this one with a grain of salt. It used to be the next hot thing in adtech when I worked in the industry before 2021.
Remember: why charge the user directly, when you can charge them indirectly using a bunch of random middlemen (DAAST, VAST, potato, potahtoh)!
> Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
Example of a slightly less stupid* game: The Apple Podcasts app. The UX is mediocre, but the ability to pay for series/bundles is something I'd like to see more. Just let me pay for the content.
As much as podcast content can be decoupled from the user agent, I'd like to see the same done with payments.
> 2. It's premium advertising real estate. The ad formats you can chuck into a podcast have higher CPM.
Not for long. I'm already starting to skip algorithmically inserted ads in podcasts because they're annoying claptrap like terrestrial radio ads. Adtech companies don't just come along and "use" ad space. They actively ruin its original value with their tactics.
I remember a few years ago that Spotify made a big deal about "not censoring explicit songs" and not even giving me the option, so if I had music playing randomly at some point it would blast out some curse-laden song while I'm driving with the kids.
I'm far more concerned with the terrible search function which puts all sorts of user created crap at the top that pretends to be what it's not, rather than album names.
Not sure if I agree that being exposed to explicit content sometimes as a child is on the same level of damage as constant vaccine misinformation/disinformation.
Does Spotify require you to listen to podcasts? Not sure why your angry that a streaming company would expand into another genre without getting your stamp of approval for what the podcasts discuss and the qualifications of the podcasters. Seems like a perfectly reasonable business move to target curious listeners.
By the way, based on your standards main stream news and most media content should be discouraged. The vast majority of it is “guys talking -- not experts in the [any] subject, but random guys who are pretty ignorant.”
You're right, I don't care much for mainstream news either, especially pundits who are just noise making machines with zero added value.
But yes, as a user and subscriber, Spotify's business decisions matter to me. Because of their decision to host podcasts, which are low-content content and have nothing to do with music, I can't listen to artists who choose to dissociate themselves with that.
So, why aren’t people more upset about mainstream news putting out blathering nonsense in 2-3 minute sound bytes about the same topics almost verbatim. Instead, there is an uproar over a podcaster that releases long interviews of people across many subjects (including controversial ones). We should be encouraging more discourse like we see on Rogan’s podcast, not berating it, especially if you prefer deeper discussion without fear of backlash by “squeaky wheel” personalities like Neil Young. Keep on rocking in the free world!
I don't have a problem with Joe Rogan. I never listened to any of his podcasts. He can say what he wants any way he wants. I don't care.
I have a problem with a service that I thought was all about music, hosting talk shows -- and talk shows that are US-centric, and controversial -- because as a consequence, said service becomes involved in a myriad of controversies and serves less music.
Of course I don't control what Spotify does; I will simply need to take my business elsewhere. It's not the end of the world; but it's annoying.
Understood. Yours is a consumer choice, not a political one. I have no problem with more content, but I do have a problem with algorithms and apps pushing content to me that ignores my preferences and/or ability to customize my searches for new content. This is an implementation detail though, not an issue with content I may dislike or not agree with.
I'm mad at Spotify because their recommendations used to be great.
Now the home page is a bunch of podcasts they're trying to get me to listen to. Even though I've never listened to a single podcast through them.
It's really annoying that recommendations, which are the primary reason I use Spotify, have gotten worse, and the UI has gotten worse, and I now have to scroll past podcasts just to get to music. I cancelled my account because of it.
> Spotify is NOT the open web. Rogan can host the audio files on his own site. That’s the open web.
I know. My point is that he can do that, and he'd lose most of his reach. Or he can keep his reach, by staying on the big (closed web) platforms, and be at these corporations' mercy. Users have been trained: they want to watch videos, they open youtube.com, maybe TikTok, and start clicking and scrolling. Most people won't expand the effort to keep up with you if you're not on the big (closed web) platforms, who have effectively taken over the web and discoverability of content.
It's like Cloudflare's free speech argument: if you're big and controversial, you essentially need DDoS protection, meaning you're dependent on the goodwill of a few big corporations. From their corporate blog[0]:
> Increasing Dependence On A Few Giant Networks
> In a not-so-distant future, if we're not there already, it may be that if you're going to put content on the Internet you'll need to use a company with a giant network like Cloudflare, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, or Alibaba [to prevent being taken down].
> For context, Cloudflare currently handles around 10% of Internet requests.
> Without a clear framework as a guide for content regulation, a small number of companies will largely determine what can and cannot be online.
"if you're big and controversial, you essentially need DDoS protection, meaning you're dependent on the goodwill of a few big corporations."
How is this any different than in the analogue world? If you want to rage against "the system" in a local bar or in your living room with a few of your friends, nobody is going to bother you. If you have a large following, you are likely to face counter-speech or even moral suasion by others who don't like what they are hearing.
So, basically rather than the old culture of free speech, what we have now is:
You're free to speak, but as speech is centralized on private platforms, they get to make sure that nobody will ever hear you. This is good (tm).
And the American left, the ones who used to fight for free speech are perfectly fine with this, so long as they own the platforms. After all, the boot of authoritarianism is fine when you're the one wearing it.
First, speech is not wholly "centralized" on private platforms. The purpose of platforms is to provide a centralized service for content, but platforms don't have the power to eliminate alternate forums for speech. There aren't Spotify brownshirts burning down indie music labels and shaking down local bands that don't sign up, or showing up at random doors to bother individuals who refuse to tune in.
Second, the idea that platforms are reacting to public opinion precisely goes against the idea of authoritarianism.
If we're going down this path -- why don't we talk about talk radio in the US, which is essentially a precusor to Joe Rogan style content and is dominated by right-wing shock jocks. Does the absolute dominance of the right wing on talk radio and the absence of left-wing content mean that there is no free speech? Or I guess to take it to the level of your dystopian fantasy, should we live in a world where cars are programmed to require the listener to listen to talk radio and prevent anyone in cars from turning off the dial?
>First, speech is not wholly "centralized" on private platforms. The purpose of platforms is to provide a centralized service for content, but platforms don't have the power to eliminate alternate forums for speech. There aren't Spotify brownshirts burning down indie music labels and shaking down local bands that don't sign up, or showing up at random doors to bother individuals who refuse to tune in.
Oh no, 99% of communication is on private platforms, surely this mean that topical discourse is extremely free as you can always scream into the void.
Pardon my sarcasm, but Freedom of Speech is fundamentally tied to the right to be (reasonably) heard as otherwise you'd have freedom of speech in almost every dystopian setting, provided nobody else hears you.
The reality of the situations is that these private platforms are the public squares of today, and like it or not, they represent the vast majority of communications. As such, the ability to censor across these platforms is vastly more powerful than any private censorship due to it's lack of constraints.
>Talk radio
Are there significant barriers to a left wing talk radio show? From what I understand, the issue isn't in institutional barriers, but instead a lack of a market. However, we've very much seen the inverse for right-wing platform, with anything from payment processors to cloudflare and other core infrastructural components locking them out.
Even better, your horrendous strawman of the cars which force said show upon listener neglects the fact that the Spotify user, if he wishes not to listen to Joe Rogan can... just not hit the play button?
> Pardon my sarcasm, but Freedom of Speech is fundamentally tied to the right to be (reasonably) heard
At least in small-l Enlightment liberalism, there is no such "right to be heard" except in the context that people have a right to petition and speak out against the government. You can't compel an audience -- this is why there is a corrolary freedom of association.
I agree with you that what tends to foster healthy social relations and civil society is where there are social norms that encourage debate and opportunities for people from different backgrounds and experiences to interact.
There's a lot of scholarship on that topic and where those spaces exist there are freedoms associated with them, but I think it would be extreme to say that people have a right to an audience.
>The reality of the situations is that these private platforms are the public squares of today, and like it or not, they represent the vast majority of communications.
Internet platforms are a cheap imitation of the town square and I don't see why we should effectively compel speech in order to maintain something like this. Even talk radio is closer to the public square in that much of the programming is live and they take (curated) calls from the listening audience.
The Internet has failed as a viable alternative for the public sphere for a number of predictable reasons. If your argument is that we should have a public square where ideas are openly contested, it's far easier to do that when the decisions are made locally in a manner that's closer to the public.
>Are there significant barriers to a left wing talk radio show? From what I understand, the issue isn't in institutional barriers, but instead a lack of a market.
Talk radio used to be closer to a public square but due to consolidation of local stations under basically a couple of owners starting in the 1980's, right wing shock jocks dominate the schedule. So, to the extent that there isn't a "market," it's for the reason you complain about regarding tech platforms and the result has been the absolute opposite of your complaint -- right wing speech is constantly present there. And frankly, take a look at tech platforms and you'll see that there are huge volumes of right wing content.
>However, we've very much seen the inverse for right-wing platform, with anything from payment processors to cloudflare and other core infrastructural components locking them out.
Those platforms are the opposite of a public square where ideology is contested rather than explicitly defined.
To directly address your point -- a lot of those were shut down for reasons beyond their politics. You can find any number of expressly right wing forums and websites on the Internet. As I've pointed out, talk radio has far more reach and impact than some of these tech platforms for better or worse.
I think you misunderstand what I mean when I say: "the open web is dead". Its reach is dead.
Previously, the "open web" was all there was, before the online walled gardens. Users were trained to get information that way. Now that traffic's been captured by the walled gardens that optimize for engagement. There's a reason Google Reader died, Google stated it: "declining use and relevance".
Going viral is essential to growing an audience. TikTok, YouTube, and Twitter offer that. The open web doesn't.
> Previously, the "open web" was all there was, before the online walled gardens.
This is revisionist bullshit. Before Facebook et al AOL was the major walled garden. After AOL's star began to fade they and everyone else focused on becoming "homepages" with integrated search. They even provided helpful search toolbars! Social media is just the latest walled garden on the web.
Don't pretend the majority of web users have ever been bravely exploring the corners of every dark nook of the web. The majority has always been on some curated site with little deviation.
My comment is just as germane to your clarification of your position. If you were to say that the open web has been overshadowed or marginalized, I would concur.
No, growing an audience of millions of people might necessitate going viral. Plenty of people are happy to have a very small, but tight knit community in their own little corner of the open web.
> My point is that he can do that, and he'd lose most of his reach.
But he already had massive reach, that’s why Spotify paid $100 million. If his fans can be relied upon to sign up for Spotify and enter their credit card details you can bet they can be relied upon to click a link on a web page.
I know it’s a weak analogy but look at something like Wordle. It’s not on Steam, or in the App Store. It’s just a web page and it spread like wildfire despite what users are supposedly “trained” to do. We’re not giving people enough credit.
> My point is that he can do that, and he'd lose most of his reach.
And? If a company spends money building a platform, including infrastructure, they can host whatever they want on it. They also don't need to host what they don't want. It doesn't matter if it's a hosting service or search engine or just a simple directory of links. No one owes anyone else their audience.
You're complaining that people might need to do work to get an audience.
> I know. My point is that he can do that, and he'd lose most of his reach.
Maybe if he was starting out. At this point his audience would follow him. That's not to mention that while he was a "traditional" podcast anyone could just add his RSS feed and listen. Indeed many of his listeners did just that before the Spotify deal. We're not yet at the point where client software is filtering content for us.
Right? I mean, good lord the amount of blabbering that end runs the obvious is annoying. Setup your own. Move on.
Maybe Joe's bigger problem is he talks too much. He ought to spend time thinking about his business not seeing himself as a celebrity. You know, in a lot of places, stupidity is not well tolerated.
And Joe? Maybe think about something to say. Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr (boxer eg Ali), MLK, Federal papers, Shakespeare, Voltaire are remembered. In the daily spoken world, you'll accumulate many data points. Eventually turn to analysis, reflection, meaning.
Cause if you don't? I can still go back to the good guys above or merely talk to your guests myself. And we'll move on.
That's like saying you should divorce after the first fight or argument. A contract has been signed for a lot of money, 2 years a business relationship has been working fine for both parties and then the shit storm happens. You think all the talk right now is because he sees himself as a celebrity? Or because it makes no rational sense to just completely end his ties with spotify or for spotify to end their ties with him at the first signs of pressure from the social justice machine?
The net is open if you have know-how beyond booking guest talent oneself or through a 3rd party e.g. booking agent if you understand something about the tech that gets your product out. That was the position I agreed with. Why? 'cause it's right.
The net is open but there's a question of how easy or even if it is possible to gain an audience comparable to what the "closed" web offers. If you don't gain popularity then it is not as easy to get high value guests in the first place because those too may seek a big audience or give more value to venues that offer it so I'm not sure I get what your point is after all.
Dude! Time to grow up. Unidimensional people are boring. You wanna know what? If all Joe can do is yack in the microphone ... Maybe the fact some of his post casts went missing is much Ado about nothing. Wanna also know what? MLK or Ali would figure out how. Maybe Joe or you or both are unmotivated
First you get a company create a large platform that makes it very difficult to for individual people to thrive in the space around it.
Then the large company starts deciding what can or cannot be published, effectively making it impossible for some people to even be present in that space.
Now, imagine the same happens for every possible space you could use to contact other people. Videos, podcasts, have a web page searchable on search engines, tweet, instant messaging, and so on and on. You are effectively excluded because your views do not match mainstream or touch controversial or taboo subjects.
I may not agree with Rogan or other people that are being excluded but that does not necessarily give me right to decide whether they shouldn't be heard by other people.
I strongly believe this is where judicial system is supposed to represent us to follow laws to judge which instances of speech are and which are not lawful.
What we have now is effectively mob rule.
Imagine some people win and decide that talking about racism should quieted down. Is it that hard to imagine?
Bait and Switch is the general business model of everything. Do you think next year DoorDash will be as cheap as it was when it first launched? As soon as companies get a decent market share, they start increasing prices. It is silly to complain about bait and switch for hosting content but not about prices.
It would be bait and switch if they changed their terms unilaterally. In this case, they always had the right to remove content from their platform whenever they consider it harmful to their platform.
Win popular approval. In the past it has been shown the popular view to not be the best, what makes you so sure the current trend is perfect and deserves no opposition?
Say you are leader of your tribe and you get bit by a dog. Then you decide all dogs should be removed from your village because dogs caused harm to you.
That's what the current social justice machine looks like to me and I don't think they are right.
I don't know honestly. The details matter.. I wouldn't agree to teach children about the infinite genders one could identify as or promote transitioning to people under 18. But have no problems teaching about standard gay acceptance.
I'm not saying the far right are good either but right now you can't say they have as much an impact on the culture as the far left.
Agreed. That said, no one is an island. A hosting provider, ISP, CDN, even DNS can all decide to make you disappear from the web. Of course, it's a much higher bar than relying on Facebook, Twitter, or Spotify.
What's funny is that Joe Rogan was an active participant on the 'open web'. He had his own a website with a blog and discussion forums, and the podcast started as vlog entries in a text blog.
"Growth" and scale are interesting concerns. Companies, cities, languages, etc that aren't "growing" are considered to be in crisis. You could have a little gig that produces and sells 100 gadgets a month. At $100 per, it's enough to quit your day job. In fact, you're considering hiring some help. Two years later, you're still selling 100 per month and can't figure out what's the problem. Maybe you need to shut it all down.
A podcast with 10,000 listeners? Wow! Who'd have ever thought our little Joey would attract so much interest? Two years later, Joseph Productions is struggling to keep the doors open with only 500,000 listeners.
Back in the day, people found a website by word of mouth and bookmarked it. 100 page views a week was awesome. 1000 a month was maybe even better than all that money spent stuffing mailboxes with flyers. This internet thing has a lot of potential.
Today? If you can't break into the front page of a Google search, what's the point?
An automaker that sells $1 billion of product is in deep trouble because growth is flat. A city that hosts 2 million convention visitors a year is "struggling" and needs a new Chief of Tourism. A town with a population of 10,000 with clean streets and no crime is at a dead end because they don't have a Walmart and can't attract new businesses.
>Money killed (or is in the process of killing) podcasting.
I see a whole lot of podcasts out there. They're mostly either something that someone does on the side either for fun or as part of their jobs or they're ad supported. (Honestly, I'm often a bit surprised that modest advertising supports obviously sizable staffs--even if I'm sure no one is getting rich.)
You’re not wrong. For me, the ads read by the podcasters themselves killed it for me. I really find the idea of “monetizing” every last thing extremely distasteful.
Unfortunately, this is the case. As someone who graduated uni in 1995, I pine (lol) for the days where the internet was largely Usenet, IRC, and email listservs followed by the early days of the web. Social media and especially social media apps on mobile devices completely ruined it.
That can’t possibly be. His audience, like so many other niche groups that gather around conspiracy theories, sure must be the smartest people. They are on to something we, sheeple, haven’t seen yet.
It's also possible to streamline adding the RSS feed by using custom url schemes (at least on iOS). A url like podcast://example.rss will open in Apple Podcasts and other podcast apps offer their own url schemes. This can make it as simple as clicking on a link to subscribe to private feeds.
I still do it to this day. I love being able to go between apps/devices/OSes and subscribe and unsubscribe to any feed at will. Discovery is a bit different, relying on recommendations from friends or referrals from creators I follow. I highly recommended it!
You see quite a bit of mutual backscratching on podcasts as well with some podcasts running guest episodes from other podcasts and so forth. I'm subscribed to far more podcasts than I regularly listen to. Honestly, I don't see discovery as a particular problem. (Standing out from so much material out there can be challenging--but that's got nothing to do with centralized vs. decentralized.)
A tiny sliver of people, relative to the podcast audience size of today, did that. The people who would still do it now is still a tiny sliver of the potential audience.
Heck I do it, but I do it for very few podcasts that I already know I like, mainly because discovery is so awkward.
> adding his URL manually to Apple Podcasts, but come on. Nobody would do that.
This is easy, they just have to put a widget tile the pod love subscribe button on their site, which makes it relatively easy for the user (if they know which podcast app they are using)
Monolithic platforms are dead. More and more creators will take lesson and put their content under their own brand. Youtbe will be just "dump host" embedded from other domain!
How is the open web dead? Are you saying that private companies acting in their benefit hurts the open web? You can still create any website or any content you desire who anyone can access. The open web didn’t provide reach by default. That is why directories sprang up followed by search engines. If anything the open web was easier to navigate 25 years ago and heavily reliant on word of mouth.
> It's likely Rogan would have been banned from YouTube and Apple Podcasts had he not moved to Spotify.
I'm not so sure. Just put the non controversial episodes on YouTube, then link and advertise the "problematic" episodes that are only available on your own platform.
It's worse under the authoritative government where I live. Multiple people including doctors were arrested by police and beaten up in custody for saying online of the dangers of covid in early 2020. And then then in late 2020 these same government organizations were beating people up again for saying online that it wasn't.
Sorry I agree with the overall sentiment that party line can shift with time unpredictably, but who had been banned in early 2020 for supporting masks? As I recall people socially self imposed masks in a matter of just a couple weeks early in the pandemic, in North America at least, and nobody would have been banned for it.
This issue needs thorough investigative work, to reconstruct an objective timeline.
But as far as I remember it, mask wearing was seen first as being something for paranoid conspiracy theorists, then selfish people, then the narrative was reversed.
Experts were invited on primetime TV to say masks are not recommended to the general public.
I distinctly remember arguing with educated people at work, online, with relatives, that masks should be worn in enclosed public places, months deep into the pandemic.
We would see old people, barely managing to walk, not wear masks while going grocery shopping, because government experts told them they didn't need to. All the while China was in total lockdown and victim counts exploding.
I fear most people would prefer to forget because they played a part in it and it makes them feel dumb. We might get collective amnesia, ensuring this part of the story never reaches the history books. We shouldn't be ashamed though, we've all been victims of misinformation and cultish behavior at one point, the important thing is to draw lessons from it.
I remember early on in December 2020? when the first rumblings of some odd disease in wuhan emerged, largely in oddball enclaves like 4chan and some subreddits.
In the right wing circles I was familiar with, they did talk about this, and were basically labelled conspiracy theorists or trolls. Then, if you remember, anti-Asian racists for associating it with China.
Masks were also ridiculed early in the pandemic, where authoritative recommendations were explicitly NOT to wear the mask [1]. Funnily enough, the response in said right-aligned communities was to wear masks. This flipped to opposition once govt recommendation flipped and mandates were implemented.
Oh, very cool, thanks for the link. There is something about human memory, since official stance has been on the side of mask mandate for so long, that makes it harder to remember how it was ever different before. Your link is very helpful
In early 2020, NYC transit operators were barred from wearing masks and the MTA reasoned that there was not federal or state policy at the time recommending mask usage.
At the time, the surgeon general cautioned the general public to stop buying masks because, "they had not been proven effective in preventing the spread of coronavirus."
Exactly. People here vastly overestimate how technical and motivated the average user is.
Trump's banned on practically all platforms. How many of his fans added his RSS to their app? (Wait, they don't use RSS apps). His only platform is now his website, where he publishes blog posts.
Did his fans follow him to the "open web"? Nope.
> Trump’s Website Traffic Dove a Yuge 99% Year Over Year
> DonaldJTrump.com went from 14 million unique visitors in April 2020 to just 161,000 in April 2021
His blog posts are reposted on multiple other platforms. If you can already see all of those posts on your favorite platform, what incentive do you have to visit the actual website?
I know it's a lost battle because anyone whose not a nerd will never care, but I wish we could all just call content that moves to a centralised platform like Spotify an internet talkshow or whatever and leave the word podcast to the people distributing MP3s via RSS.
This is an interesting point. To me, it feels like an old-form talkshow would be radio or TV. Both of these are subject to heavy regulation and corporate gatekeeping. That is much less true for Internet publishing. Although, as Internet publishing becomes more and more centralised, the same regulations and gatekeeping are likely to emerge in similar form.
The only people who think that the medium is the message are people whose focus is studying media, and not messages. Kind of like "to the guy with a hammer everything looks like a nail" type.
Web hosting companies can be pressured into removing domains and hosting.
Companies running mobile App Stores can be forced to remove apps from their platform.
Social media sites are forced to take down content all the time.
This doesn't mean it will be impossible for people to find these types of content but with each level of restriction, the people who are able and willing to go through the pain to get the information will shrink to a point that they hold no power anymore.
The web was "open" because it was rather small and insignificant. Now that it can move markets and decide which way the world power shifts, those who are at risk of losing their power will do everything to control it so that it doesn't happen.
>The worst use of the <BLINK> tag ever was the discussion held in the early days of RSS about escaping HTML in titles, whose attention-grabbing title went something like this: "Hey, what happens when you put a <BLINK> tag in the title???!!!"
>The content of that notorious discussion went on and off and on and off for weeks, giving all the netizens of the RSS community blogosphere terrible headaches, with people's entire blogs disappearing and reappearing every second, until it finally reached a flashing point, when Dave Winer humbly conceded that it wasn't the user's fault for being an idiot, and maybe just maybe there was tiny teeny little design flaw in RSS, and it wasn't actually such a great idea to allow HTML tags in RSS titles.
Also we have user-agents. Our userscripts (& amassed socialized, collective defenses they enable) should help provide us agency, to defend us against hijinx, to give us our own preferred view of systems. The web platform is uniquely able to handle these trivial little harassment cases, in ways far better than conventional software. This is just such a small-minded, speck-of-dust little concern to me, such a minor irrelevant point. Who cares how long & how stupid the thread on blink tag was, or how hyperbolic the lulz were at the time over it- this is easy to fix.
Podcasting not having a specification allows hollowed out soulless corporate ghouls to put any audio series they want online however they want & call it a podcast. Even a flawed, shitty specification at least defines some base idea, creates a general technical terrain that defines the idea. Podcasting got ripped the fuck off by monsters, because it had no specification. Technical cooperation is impossible without defined technical grounds.
Being serious: do you really think a lack of RFC killed RSS? If so, why not submit one now? I feel like RSS could make a serious comeback if given a chance, like built-in browser support for it.
There is another dimension of choice being taken away as well. Spotify doesn't allow users to hide podcasts or rearrange the order in which things appear, so if you are an 18-34 male you have absolutely no choice but to see JRs face presented to you constantly with no way to remove it... It's functionally an unblockable banner ad even though im paying them.
If i had the ability to just not see this podcast at all (like spotify already does for specific songs) i wouldn't have a horse in this race. However, being involuntarily subjected to something has a way of breeding intense dislike that wouldn't otherwise exist.
This is why I cancelled Spotify. I don't use it for podcasts, I prefer to curate them myself. However since they started offering them, I now have thing that I can only describe as "ads" turning up every time I open Spotify.
I started paying for Spotify years ago to remove ads, and now I appear to be paying _and_ getting ads.
> This argument is so tired. You’re saying they have the right to censor, so say it
I think it's just a strange choice of word. Joe Rogan has the right to publish his podcasts uncensored. So he's not really being censored in the "free speech" sense. He still has the freedom to put his content uncensored on the internet for all to listen too if they choose.
Spotify has the right to choose what they publish or don't publish.
I think talking about censorship and free speech seems beyond the point to me, since I don't see any of those rights being taken away. And since I don't see the premise being true, I can't really take seriously the argument.
Instead, if you're just against the people who are saying that Joe Rogan is misleading and being harmful to society, and that by promoting and publishing his content, Spotify is also doing similar harm and thus they choose to boycott the companies products then discuss that. If you think people are making a baseless fuss about the harmful effects of his podcast on society and the efforts to fight COVID then bring that up instead.
> The counter argument is that censorship is bad in all its forms. It’s one I and many others support
I just want to point out that's not a counter-argument, that's a conclusion, and the argument for it is missing. If you want to make a point to the conclusion you need to explain the premise that you use to arrive there.
I don't really agree with the "all censorship is bad" argument either. The counterarguments are too obvious - every viable community on the internet has a moderator team or equivalent. And it isn't really a question of whether this can be done. Spotify have done it and nobody is pointing to a broken law. There isn't anything interesting here legally or technically speaking (and that is proper - Spotify should control what is accessible on Spotify).
The problem here is Spotify are screwing up their editorial responsibilities. Joe Rogan has reached the sort of critical mass where he gets to decide what is in the public's interest to talk about. These faceless censors at Spotify aren't qualified to do that, or qualified to decide what is and isn't misinformation. They are acting foolishly outside their wheelhouse of creating platforms. They are screwing up by taking down interesting and entertaining content, making decisions that is going to get a very large audience upset with them.
They pay Rogan because he is better at this sort of decision than they are. This is a poor follow up.
I agree that many outlets are screwing up their editorial policies, and Spotify definitely doesn't seem to be putting any effort into that regard. But I think Joe Rogan also screwed up his editorial responsibilities to some extent. He said it himself, that he doesn't research the topics beforehand, he just begins thinking about things on the spot as the interview unfolds and that he doesn't present the opposite views or make clear what level of disagreement the topic has.
He seems to have higher standards than conventional news. It is reliatively rare to see Rogan asserting something that he has to know is false (apart from the obvious things like those long-form ads at the start of the podcast).
Going straight to politics, which is what really upsets people about Rogan, the standard here is people who spent multiple years of sustained campaigning confidently speculating that the US president is in league with the Russians. Or people before that who spent years onfidently speculating that the president was a Muslim trying to institute the Sharia in Texas or something crazy like that. I don't really remember the sillyness that far back in the Obama years. Joe Rogan at least has credentialed guests and lets them talk off-narritive. In that CNN horse-paste interview he had a CNN guy on who could have challenged him back or defended the position.
Rogan has much, much higher standards than what has traditionally been done for politics. He's probably doing better than traditional news reporting in other areas too.
Agreed. I see this as a result of Spotify avoiding risks:
1. to not lose as many customers as possible who are outraged with Rogan — maybe they did the math based on advertising profiling.
2. to not lose Joe Rogan, one of the most popular shows they have, and thus, customers/users.
3. to not spark further outrage from other popular artists who might leave.
4. to protect their name and brand.
5. to avoid being removed from the Apple App Store when Apple eventually lays the ban hammer down because "their app is spreading misinfo", just like the Alex Jones debacle that empowered Apple to assess app availability based on their political whims and agreement (abhorrent by the way). This goes for other platforms.
6. to avoid banks who manage their funds from canceling them for supporting a show, person, or stance the bank disagrees with.
We are truly in an ugly mess of global political wars where even the slightest wrong move in speech/expression will completely ruin a company or person's ability to survive—well, maybe survival isn't the issue, but undue harm is.
This is especially on the Left, who are too ready and willing to spark that ruin, viewing legal systems and power only as a tool to control their opposition, who has valid stances on myriad topics. On the Right, they complain a lot, but at least they aren't using any means necessary to actively change the fundamental course of people's lives, livelihood, and futures due to what boils down to a political disagreement in the realm of speech/expression.
We can't pretend that science is inherently fact just because it leads to forming facts later, when it has always been described as a a fallible process of discovery, leading to theories, which are either supported by evidence or amply refuted.
In this case, the doctors Rogan hosted, along with 100k+ other doctors globally have refuted the mainstream claims around vaccines and the handling of treatment — enough to require panels of discussion and enormous scrutiny towards the likes of Fauci and others who are claiming to "be science," in nothing other than pure dripping hubris and condescension towards anyone who dares to question them.
This is one problem we should be addressing, in addition to the censor-or-fail mentality affecting nearly every publishing platform.
> This is especially on the Left, who are too ready and willing to spark that ruin, viewing legal systems and power only as a tool to control their opposition, who has valid stances on myriad topics. On the Right, they complain a lot, but at least they aren't using any means necessary to actively change the fundamental course of people's lives
If you look politically, it is just as true, and historically much more so I feel from the American right, which has normally had the church and the puritans on its side, and has always fought to get sex, LGBTQ, minorities, and even science removed from popular channels of discourse.
Also, as someone who follows the science, I'm not seeing 100k+ researchers with published data refuting the science. Doctors are not all scientist. Most practitioners have their own belief system, often from their own daily biases. And in the medical science community, it turns out, those things are being investigated, but are still far from being unambiguous and evidence backed. The policy makers are taking risks one way or another, because they're having to make decisions with limited scientific analysis, data, and experiments.
When you think of scientific consensus, what do you think it means? It is a confidence score in the current state of data and experiment. It is an assessment of given what we know today, what is most likely true. You can take bets against it, because it is probabilities and not certainties, science is always probabilistic unlike religion. But if you're a policy maker, taking a bet against the current odds seem like a gamble you shouldn't be making.
Thus from my stance, this is all political, and science is doing the right thing, and most policy makers that follows scientific consensus are just playing it safe with the odds.
The people who are trying to discredit science and the consensus are taking political bets, they want to discredit things to gain power, in the off chance the consensus is wrong, they win big politically, in the many more likely odds they'd be wrong, most people won't notice and it won't make the news.
The effect of it all though, from my point of view, is actually that it is used once again by the right as a way to convince people science is wrong all along. Which goes back to my initial take, historically, the right has always tried to silence science, and this to me is just another attempt at discrediting its processes and misrepresenting it's propositions and stance. It's trying to get people to instead believe that the political leaders and key scientists that have become agent of politics are more trustworthy than science itself, and that they now should listen to them exclusively for the real truth.
That... doesn't make sense. They can choose to publish or not publish whatever they want in their paper. The top people at a newspaper are literally called editors, and they routinely make decisions about what goes in and what does not.
Happens all the time. Like, IIRC The Spectator (a hard-right wing publication) taking down a fawning article about Greece’s far-right Golden Dawn by Taki. Maybe I misremembered the specific piece, but I can’t find hide nor hair of it on the Spectator website, despite plenty of (broken) links to it from commentators.
It's not censorship, it's just a publication strategy. It's editorialising content they bought and paid for, whether they publish their own property or not is up to them.
The government didn't ask Spotify to censor Joe Rogan. The surgeon general didn't ask Spotify to censor Joe Rogan. Not even the extremely uncharitable, biased take in that trash you linked to goes so far as to claim that.
If the government had made a law making it illegal for Spotify to carry Joe Rogan, that would have been censorship. None of the conditions were even close.
Spotify is a private institution, and has the option of carrying content, or not, at their editorial discretion. You can disagree with their choice, and if you do, the proper redress is to put pressure on Spotify, not to claim it's government censorship, which it's not.
It has that effect though. It comes from an official position that represents the views of an elected leader, and by extension, has the weight of it being a mandate or statement with enough public attention to see or expect change.
While it may not be in legal terms, many see it as an opportunity to greenlight the bypassing of legal/legislative procedures, especially by those who consider the current administration(s) political allies.
As an example, Jen Psaki has stated in the past that they are working with social media to "handle disinformation", and the likes of wokie Zuckerberg wouldn't hesitate to operate outside of Congress or courts to satisfy the whims of his masters.
What utter piffle. Elected politicians and appointees complain about things in the press every single day, and have done for the entire history of democracy. That is not censorship, or attempted censorship, or anything remotely adjacent to it.
What if the political appointee publicly states they would like Spotify to censor Joe Rogan? Perhaps 'the government' is simply too ineffably abstract an entity to attach to any individual actor commonly regarded as comprising it.
The government didn't ask Spotify, the surgeon General suggested Spotify should do take it down on MSNBC. Totally different, and if they want to take the governments suggestion that isn't government enforced censorship even if it leaves a bad taste in your mouth
The Surgeon General isn't a position elected by the People, and to have them making strong suggestions (or threats) around speech that is regarded as highly controversial (i.e. both opposing sides are large and have valid stances) is repulsive, when behind the scenes _and_ publicly there is legal and monetary coercion happening to put the likes of Spotify in jeopardy if they don't bend to a single political narrative.
So if the government can force spotify to publish all opinions, why should they not be able to force you to do the same on your blog?
In the status quo private people and companies are allowed to not accept contributions on their websites. This is not censorship, this is their right as runners of a plattform. Joe rogan can always go and create his own if he finds that no one wants to publish him.
I don't see how enabling the government to force people to publish speech they don't want to say isn't 100% worse than what we have now. It reminds me of stories from the soviet union.
If the government has tried to "force" Spotify to take down or produce content, then the government is in the wrong and Spotify is spineless for not fighting back. We have the Constitution for a reason in the U.S. The government would not have a leg to stand on.
But that's not what happened. Spotify is taking down content for financial reasons. They don't like the heat they are getting from the press, musicians, and yes maybe perhaps the government. And companies have always made editorial decisions for financial reasons.
Indeed. And this happened after a very specific carve-out to understood freedom of association law via the Civil Rights Act. And with good reason! But it was controversial then and in some circles it still is. The CRA curtailed the freedoms of many to give greater freedom to all in the form of equal treatment regardless of [insert full list of inherent traits here], not just under the law, but in business also. Prior to it, all the discriminations you listed were legal.
If you think we should further carve into people's freedoms to associate (or, in this case, freedom of the press to publish or refrain from publishing Rogan) in the interests of broader freedom, what should that law look like and on what underlying philosophy should it be based?
You're allowed to say anything you want, but you are not allowed to discriminate based on race, and if such signs in the window would cause a reasonable person to think you are discriminating based on race, then yes they must be taken down.
There are obviously limits to free speech and there always have been. Can I perjure myself in front of a jury? Can I yell "fire" in a crowded theater? Each of these actions would have a consequence, and it is the act of knowingly provoking that consequence that is prohibited, not the act of speech itself.
If there's a fire, or you think there's a fire, I'd say you have a moral obligation to yell "fire in a crowded theater".
It's probably the worst example as this was the metaphor was by the government when people were passing out anti war flyers opposing the draft during WWI. These same people were tried and convicted under the espionage and sedition acts. The judges unanimously sided with the government.
If I think there's a fire, or a problem, damn straight I'm going to speak up, and this definitely feels like Spotify is taking down things "the public", no court even required how great, find distasteful in the moment.
> The counter argument is that censorship is bad in all its forms.
That’s a platitude, not an argument. And being absolutist is being sadly ignorant of the realities of public speech.
Censorship is not just sometimes good, it’s also sometimes required by law. There is a fairly long list of things that are explicitly illegal to say and are exceptions to US freedom of speech laws, including: libel, slander, obscenity, pornography, sedition, incitement, fighting words, classified information, copyright violation, trade secrets, state secrets, non-disclosure agreements, personal private information, and, last but not least: lies.
Censorship is required by the GDPR, for example, when dealing with Personally Identifying Information (PII). Because the freedoms to speak publicly can conflict with our own freedoms privately, some kinds of censorship are beneficial to people including you.
Commercial speech is specifically exempted from US Freedom of Speech laws. You can spend time getting upset over legal private censorship all you want, but it isn’t a Freedom of Speech issue, and it doesn’t amount to a meaningful moral or principled stand. Our courts have already established through two hundred years or argument and precedent that our principles are that cash corrupts speech and should not be a protected category.
Before the internet, if I wrote a letter to the editor of a magazine or comic book, the editor obviously made the decision whether to publish my letter or not. Was this censorship? No, of course not. And no one complained about it. It wasn't my magazine after all.
Of course, I could just start my own magazine if I want to publish my own content, but that would obviously be ridiculously cost prohibitive. And this was the norm for magazines, radio, TV. There was always strong editorial control by corporations.
Boom comes the internet, and all of that goes away. As long as you can convince your web host to host you, you can say what you like.
But now podcasts and content creators are making deals with big corporations again, and those corporations have the right to make the same decisions the magazine editors did. It's not censorship. It's how things have always been.
You can always build your own website, and the government will not interfere. There is your freedom of speech. Your web host might, but even that hasn't been an obstacle for extreme left/right wing sites, at least not so far. Worse comes to worse you can seed your content on bittorrent.
> Worse comes to worse you can seed your content on bittorrent.
At the expense of huge barriers of entry for people to discover that content, or even care bothering with the hoops you would have to jump through to find something you're interested in, to the less tech savvy.
This is partly why the removal of content after its publication due to political pressure and threats of coercion is fundamentally the problem that needs to be addressed.
Whether it's semantically "censorship" or not is debatable, but the ill effects it has on society are irrefutable, by communicating:
1. these views need to be taken down.
2. these views need to be silenced.
3. the consumers of this information are "domestic terrorists" or "completely stupid", as readily communicated by major pundits on the Left, and at times, by our own leaders (Biden, Trudeau).
4. the 100,000+ global outspoken doctors who agree with these controversial views are fringe, misguided, deserving of losing their licenses, etc.
... All 4 reek of condescension and political bias in a way that damages and divides society to the extent that massive psychological harm is inflicted on millions of people seeking good information who want to be left alone, and risks enforcing a single stream of thought where panels of experts or public dialogue are discouraged.
That should alarm anyone who trusts the scientific method as a means to find answers and provide honest insight into something as imperative as a pandemic.
I am not American, I grew up in a country where everything Nazi is very much verboten (Austria, Germany). I was always quite curious about the American insistence on free speech.
Today I feel free speech is worse off in the US than it is over here, purely for cultural reasons.
Also: I thought the limits on the US idea of free speech was that things like yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theatre would not be covered by free speech. But hasn't the internet created another kind of crowded theatre in which people can yell the online equivalent of "Fire!" to deal substantial damage to society?
I think censorship is a slippery slope and I am not at all for it — yet I wonder if what we see here is just the beginning of society figuring out how to deal with free speech in the web. Finding the borders of what can reasonably be allowed, because "everything" proofed to be an unacceptably destructive answer to most.
It's because the loudest advocates of free speech, for the most part, have always gotten away with being aggressive.
Scientific discussion, as faulty as it is, happened just fine behind the scenes. But people who have limited views of how things work think the smart-pants showing up on JRE is the real deal when most serious people know it's mostly hot air. (And of course compounded by multiple frustrations - which is totally understandable)
Not by accident: history will show that WWIII was fought largely on the internet, yet caused a death toll in excess of land wars thanks to the ability to weaponize health crises.
It's not strictly 'people' yelling fire to cause damage to society. It is nationstates, same as always, contriving TO damage competing nationstates in ingenious ways. Points for the ingenuity but these are still warlike acts. None of this happens in a vacuum, and so much of it would dry up and become irrelevant if not fed and directed from elsewhere.
> I guess the only long-term solution is having a large majority of the population with enough "mental defenses", being able to think for themselves.
Fully agree.
I think we miss over and over this element in the “free speech debate”. We tend to consider “free speech” merely as “allowing an individual to express him/herself” and I think is more complex than that. From my perspective, “freedom of speech” should be a stack formed always by three elements:
1. Freedom of speech itself
2. Intellectual humbleness from the speaker.
3. Critical thinking from the listeners.
Without those elements, I think we will not progress on the big scale on this matter and will fall over and over again in the same “back and forth” empty fight of “should/shouldn’t we allow this guy to podcast those things?”.
I don't feel there are many "unsayable" things in Austria and Germany. We still have a vibrant right wing here and the left wing is arguably more left than most things found in the US. They just are not allowed to display Nazi insignia.
In fact when it comes to sexuality and nudity europe feels a ton more free than the US when it comes to speech. We don't think a depiction of a female nipple that kids used to suck as kids will corrupt society for some weird religous reason for example. The US is incredibly prude and in that area censorship is rampant, yet nearly nobody complains here.
There is always soft censorship going on in any society — it is just not visible to those inside it if the big majority agrees. You don't need a central, authoritarian censorship for this you need people that have a common shared minimum standard of what they think is acceptable. Or aa you called it: enough "mental defenses"
I totally agree with you around regarding the way sexuality is treated here in the US, and think you're on the whole correct that socially we soft censor a whole lot.
But when you say "vibrant right wing" and they're "just...not allowed to display Nazi insignia", are you referring to the extreme right wing that're basically Nazis without the logos?
If so, given that they exist, what do you see as the point at all of having those bans on the iconography? It seems your society largely _does_ have the mental defenses that I agree with OP are necessary to combat the downsides of free speech writ large. So then why have those bans in place at all?
It is against the law to run around with a swastika and raise your hand and do the Hitler-Gruß, it is illegal to display a SS-flag. It is illegal even to own such insignia. Denying the holocaust can also be illegal etc.
Yet many of the German Nazis still have those at home, they can be shown in educational contexts or in museums etc. Forbidding something doesn't make it go away, it just shows where the free democratic society you live in draws the border.
Germany has been a democracy before the Nazis took over in the 20s and it is one again today. However many Germans are well aware that this could change again in the future. You might have heard about the paradoxon of intolerance: if you are tolerant to fascists, because tolerance is your highest value, one day they might come to power and create an intolerant society — therefor if maintaining a tolerant society is our goal we paradoxically have to show intolerance to those who want to abolish it.
This means Germans weigh the value of our democracy surviving fascist uprising higher than even freedom of speech.
This is true to any society, country or culture. I get why there's a stigma connected to Germany, but what happened there could easily have happened- or happen in the future - literally anywhere else. I don't see any society immune to this, and knowing this vulnerability is precisely the first foundation of defense against these extremes. I agree we can't be gullible about freedom by allowing it to become a tool serving evil.
at a population level, this total doesn't work. every IQ strata has their Joe Rogan - someone who speaks to their fear, hatred, and bias in a way that makes sense to them.
smart people are equally susceptible to propaganda and mind control as dumb people. But smart people think they are immune through "critical thinking".
FB has teams of social scientists with all the data in the world to run experiments on us. We are herd animals who think we are all rugged individualists.
Where "nazi-like" ideas are mostly everything that disagrees with a given narrative (particularly the mainstream narrative). Of course this comprises actual Nazis successors, but for the most part you just have the hammer to nail everything down that one does not agree with. It is in fact so widely used that it has its own fallacy: Reductio ad Hitlerum.
I like the safety/damage perspective you brought up. Feels like some powers have figured out how to sell seemingly any limit on liberty as an increase in safety. Seen in that way many other trends in US make sense - TSA since 9/11, complete absence of kids from all public spaces, mass surveillance, maybe even COVID restrictions. Too many important things are dangerous to make bubble wrapping the entire world a reasonable strategy.
> Also: I thought the limits on the US idea of free speech was that things like yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theatre would not be covered by free speech. But hasn't the internet created another kind of crowded theatre in which people can yell the online equivalent of "Fire!" to deal substantial damage to society?
This is a very good point. Many extremists (left and right) are shouting "fascism!" or "communism!" and moving masses of people. The analogy works quite well.
It's not a very well thought of equivalence when the individual can't even yell "I think there might be a fire" without being censored, because platforms think (and most of the time they're right) that consumers are too stupid.
> Too bad only one side of the analogy gets banned.
Right wingers encourage and carry out violence against people, based on traits like race, otherness, etc. Left wingers mostly focus on property, fascists ("Antifa") and sometimes the police. Both kinds of violence are wrong to various degrees, but I can kinda understand that someone who formulates a threat of vandalism against corporate symbols will get banned less likely than someone who formulates violent threats against minorities or specific persons.
These two things are not the same, it is the difference between someone keying your mercedes and someone assaulting you in the street. One thing is shitty, but survivable, the other isn't.
This characterisation is not based on my feelings or the claims of either side, but backed by publications like the annual report on the protection of the constitution as it is made by the German Verfassungsschutz – an organization which can hardly be described as left leaning: https://www.verfassungsschutz.de/SharedDocs/publikationen/DE...
I only found the summary in english, the full (German) version has more fine grained statistics which support my characterisation.
It really didn't prove to be unacceptably destructive. That's an attempt to create a new narrative that sounds moderate and middle ground, but it's not based on anything. Free speech worked out just great and the internet went from nothing to a critical piece of everyone's lives in the span of about 20 years, on the back of more or less pure free speech policies. It's not an accident that the USA dominates internet services and Germany/Austria are left with 20th century industries like cars. That's the first amendment doing its job.
No. He could have continued distribution the same way he was prior. He also could have self distributed. He didn’t need a distribution platform because Podcasts don’t require it. Just an RSS feed.
Why isn't anyone who think they have something to say that might be bad for business or controversial not just self-publish? It's normal that distributors and publications would be unsure about publishing controversial stuff that could be bad PR and bad for business, so self-publishing seems like the way to go.
Irrelevant in terms of what values should be exemplified.
Not to mention you don't know the contract. The only public knowledge about the contract comes from Rogans description orbit, which contradicts what you're saying.
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.
Yeah I've encountered people that tell me "it's their choice if they leave spotify if rogan wasn't censored" like that wasn't a prime example of cancel culture. The worse thing is that they think they are in the right. Eventually you if you can convince them that its censorship, they will counter that there was nothing wrong with censoring people "[... because of x]". No reason or whatsoever legitimates censorship in my opinion.
I also get cancelled on several forums on a regular basis when I say bad things about pharmaceutical companies or against government etc. even if it's completely neutral. I've seen all reasons already to censor me:
- insults
- conspiracy
- talking about controversial topics in general
It’s not censorship, nobody is saying he can’t go and do his podcast on his own site. Those artists just don’t want to be associated with him. They don’t want to be earning Spotify money that goes to Rogan. I respect their actions completely.
Also “cancel culture” is mostly not a bad thing, it’s more like “consequence culture”. The people who find themselves “cancelled” almost always still end up with large platforms.
I'm surprised to see these talking points still being repeated. They were plausible a few years ago, but now? Just silly.
> The people who find themselves “cancelled” almost always still end up with large platforms.
Survivorship bias. Most of the people who get cancelled just disappear. They don't have FU money or a big following. We only keep hearing about the few who are too big to cancel.
Plus you're not taking into account how much of a chilling effect all of this has. Many people are now self censoring. That has a regressive effect on society. We can't progress without free and open exchange of ideas.
The ones who “just disappear” aren’t actually losing much. If they don’t have a platform in the first place then how much does getting cancelled actually matter? That’s why I’m talking about the popular ones.
I don’t buy the idea that the supposed “chilling effect” is a bad thing. If “self censoring” means there are fewer people spreadinf misinformation, then I’m all for it.
That's incorrect. No matter where Rogan hosts his content, these people will go after him. They've pressured AWS, CloudFlare and others before too, with some success.
I do think that there is a certain mob aspect to it which is... uncomfortable. And when the affected people don't really have agency unlike in this case (i.e. some 20-something posts something dumb on social media that embarrasses their employer and they get fired because that's the easiest thing for their company to do), that's even more uncomfortable.
But ultimately individuals can't and shouldn't be prevented from doing anything they want within the bounds of law.
This is not "political censorship" this is "corporate censorship", at least be precise about what you are saying. It's absolutely within their right to self censor their product.
This is not an attack on free speech, this is free market economics at work. Spotify is free to promote and profit from whomever they please, and other creative artists are free to take their work elsewhere. Market demand will determine the outcome.
The First Amendment states "Congress shall make no law ..."; it says only what the *gov't* can and cannot do
Privatized censorship is censorship. We were discussing censorship. We are not discussing your particular government. This may surprise many Americans but people are not always talking about the US government.
But if you use the word too liberally, it loses its meaning. Corporations have always editorialized their content. Now that's censorship?
Or to put it more simply: would you consider parents who tell their children not to curse or risk punishment censorship? Or how about at school? How about requiring a dress code at a restaurant or school? Is this all censorship?
We have to be clear. Corporations editorializing has always been called editorializing, even when they do so at the government's behest, which has happened historically when the government feels publishing something could threaten national security or might create a panic. Or when a journalist is trying to curry favor with a politician. It's only censorship when a government authority figure threatens punishment.
This chain is about "free speech", not censorship, and "free speech" alludes to the first amendment of the US constitution. You're replying to somebody talking about free speech, who was replying to somebody likewise talking about free speech.
You seem like you just wanted to condescend some Americans - a very tired trope on this site.
The third way is believing there is practical value to restricting governments from disallowing their citizens to speak freely because a people who cannot speak freely tends to become revolutionary over time as their true desires grow divorced from the government's understanding of them.
That's miles away from thinking paying people to proliferate lies about how vaccines work is cool.
This argument hinges on whether one believes internet access is a right, and if it is, what form that right takes.
Neither is a settled question, though the world community tends to be leaning towards "yes" as the answer to the first and is busying itself with the mucky process of answering the second.
handeave-handwave That document is a good start, but it mostly says human rights that are violated are still violated if they are violated with the Internet. There are a lot of subtle questions of rights collision it doesn't address, to which I was referring (including how freedom of speech and freedom of press interact when the speech is through someone else's service).
... And that's considering only the UN member nations. 70+ nations are not UN members and a statement like this has no bearing on them.
This is a straw man. Something closer would be. You have a blog. You like the content I create. So you form a contract with me to development content and put it on your blog. Part of the contract is that you are the exclusive distributor of my content. You then decide you don’t like the content I’m putting out and cease to distribute my content.
Misinformation is a meaningless word. Authorities are wrong all of the time. Misinformation requires belief in a heterodoxy. Heterodoxy is ascientific.
I am not as free as Joe Rogan to get paid $100 million by Spotify for doing a podcast. So we don't all seem to have the same amount of "freedom" here.
Spotify's arbitrary choices about what content they want to host comes into it, what content they think is good for their business, etc. I don't think Spotify's choice to pay Rogan $100 million but not me is any more or less "censorship" than their choice of what episodes they want to include for that $100 million.
You are saying it's clear freedom is not impacted by Spotify choosing who to pay $100 million to, but is equally clear that it's impacted by Spotify choosing what episodes to pay $100 million for?
Does freedom require my boss to let me do whatever I want at work too? Or just Rogan?
None of that seems as clear to me as it does to you.
Yes and no. You’re right that to many want to censor everyone they disagree with.
In this case, sure Rogan is just an idiot, but he’s honestly allowed to be. Spotifys competition, with Google and other only caused problems because Spotify was dumb enough to pay Joe Rogan $100 million for an exclusive podcast. By doing so they went from just being a platform to having an editiorial responsibility.
Had Spotify not paid Joe Rogan, they could have defended their position as “just a platform provider” who shouldn’t interfer with content.
I would sooo love to have my free speech violated the way Joe does: having episodes of talk show I was hired to do for 100 million dollars removed.
In fact, I can deal with bunch more free speech violations if I getting enough money that I and my children and my grandchildren will never know need and never have to work days in their lives.
No, people making millions out of misinformation is the problem. They have learned to appeal to primitive instincts and are making their fortunes out of that.
Attempts are curtailing the spread of dangerous misinformation wouldn't happen without the dangerous misinformation first.
Rather than being mad for "people calling for censorship", maybe you should be mad for people making a profit of deaths, or the general anti-science, anti-education culture that consumes and amplifies it.
Generally, there might be cases where I agree with you. But this is very different. Spotify paid Joe Rogan 100 million for the podcast. They (probably) own all the rights to this podcast. If they don't like it anymore they can do whatever they want with it. If I buy a TV and don't like it anymore I can also set it on fire. If you don't want this to happen to your TV, don't sell it to me.
More relevantly, if you've got a motivation to pay handsomely for the falsehoods to be propagated because they serve your purposes, you end up with truth having to compete with heavily subsidized falsehoods. That's a big ask.
It's not only about whether the falsehoods (say, National Enquirer type stuff, nonsense that hooks gullible people) are sexy in that they latch onto people's assumptions and fears. It's also about who's paying to keep pumping them out. None of this is organic. A lot of money goes into subsidizing this stuff. Follow the money and you end up with rival countries who actively want to see their enemies harmed, and have arrived at this very effective way of sowing chaos and sabotage.
People don't have to be that dumb, if you can flood their zone with crafted information to sway 'em. You just have to hook them and then lead them. You don't have to rely on people being incredibly, organically obtuse if you can play 'em and manipulate them, and that's where social media turned into a superweapon. It was for sale, and not very concerned about who was buying it, or why they were doing it. And here we are.
That doesn’t really work if your holy speech is merely mediocre.
There is a reason people try to lump in any criticism with absolute insanity like the pizzagate conspiracies. They need the contrast to be as big as they can make it, so their story appears better than it is. Because on its own it really isn’t quite good enough.
You are quite literally proving to those people that there is a conspiracy to suppress the information. I don't think banning pizzagate from public discourse does anything beneficial. I say this as someone with a nutcase qanon family member.
The First Amendment protects us from the government censoring speech. It is not a prohibition on private companies removing content or private citizens demanding the removal of speech they disapprove of.
The fact that this discourse can happen in the open is proof that free speech exists and is in force.
If the Biden administration could control speech they could ban anyone suggesting anything other than the official position of the government. Clearly this is not happening.
Likewise, if the government could control speech they could choose to force Neil Young to place his music back on Spotify for the sake of trade. This is not happening.
Once again we have someone here conflating the first amendement with free speech. Free speech is a principle, the first amendment works in service of it.
The GP’s comment is that “This is the latest attack in an ongoing war on free speech. We are losing our freedoms.”
What freedoms can possible be referred to other than the First Amendment? This is the standard language of someone applying the First Amendment to private citizens and companies.
This specific conflict is involving Americans and the American arm of Spotify. Those unenumerated freedoms are supported by the laws of the country.
If you want to devolve into purely hypotheticals you’re going to find yourself on weak legs because the ultimate argument ends up being that “Joe Rogan speech is denying my freedom from hearing arguments I do not agree with.” These specific issues have been long settled by the rule of law. Being contrarian about this is neither productive or practical.
Where does my freedom end and yours begin? If I am infringing on what you feel is your freedom, where is that line? Do I get to play my loud music at 2AM when you have an early morning? Is it ok if you are sleeping in the next day so it doesn’t really matter that I’m keeping you up? When do these ultimate and unlimited unenumerated freedoms fall apart?
When they infringe on what society considers to be the normative freedoms we all get to enjoy.
Spotify gets to run their private business as they see fit because that is their freedom to do as long as they do not break a law or infringe upon your freedoms. Your perceived freedoms cannot infringe upon their freedoms.
I made no claim that Spotify is without right to do as it pleases per contractual obligation. I do make the claim that freedoms can be eroded legally, such as freedom to enjoy an alternative opinion.
As I mentioned in the other comment, I was replying to someone explicitly stating that “we are losing out freedoms.” That is not a censorship argument. Censorship can happen without your individual liberties being attacked.
This is something I think you need to unpack, at least if you want to convince me.
Prior to the last few years, Propaganda has always been acknowledged as detrimental to society, and a weapon yielded by authoritarian anti-democratic regimes and forces such as Nazism, Fascism, Communism and others.
It's nature is to deceive, misled, and discredit the truth, in order to gain political power.
It's seen as many as a way to repress speech, by shouting louder and more clearly then the voices of truth. It silences other messages by publishing large content to the contrary as well as direct attacks on the truth to discredit it.
From that angle, it seems to me Propaganda itself is a weapon against free speech.
In my opinion that means when you have a lot of propaganda in your media and social spheres, you automatically have less free speech.
Now I reckon that just having someone censor what they think is propaganda is giving that person, if they were the one behind the propaganda in the first place, all the cards, as they can now promote Propaganda and silence voices against it.
And that's not what I'm saying the solution should be, but for me to be satisfied, I need a solution that recognizes both these dimensions. And the solution of just allow all form of propaganda I also see as terrible, it's the second worst one after the other, just let people spread confusion and attacks to the truth in masse is almost as bad as letting them silence the truth.
I agree, but I just can't think what that would be. If you restrict propaganda; then you need to define propaganda. By doing that; you are perpetuating your or someone else's bias which would then be amplified by restricting everyone else from hearing of alternative ideas.
To be fair, you covered that; but I don't see how restricting speech does anything else.
I'd say that we have much bigger issues to worry about than censoring Joe Rogan if you truly believe the world is so far gone that majority of the population is not capable of listening to multiple opposing viewpoints, weighing them accordingly, and coming to their own conclusions.
> but free speech idealism is dangerous and is actively harming the world - [...] antivaxx crap resulting in resurgence of once eradicated diseases
Similarly, free speech denialism is resulting in resurgence of censorship and propaganda.
We're actively handing the only real power we have in a democratic society back into the hands of the establishment, and for what?
If you have any moral principles, it seems naive to think that your opinions will always align with the popular narrative.
By delegitimizing the fundamental right to free speech, you are ensuring that you will be silenced, cancelled, or deplatformed yourself if you ever attempt to speak out about something you don't agree with.
> Similarly, free speech denialism is resulting in resurgence of censorship and propaganda
What is free speech denialism? Nobody denies free speech is a very important right to be cherished and preserved. Propaganda hae nothing to do with free speech, and hasn't really moved either way (there's as much as there was before).
It's not about the popular narrative, it's about boundaries. Overt racism, antivax anti-science shouldn't be excused with free speech, which doesn't in any way impact wether or not and who can criticise what.
Belief that opposing viewpoints don't deserve to be protected under free speech (excluding the obvious, like inciting violence).
> Propaganda hae nothing to do with free speech, and hasn't really moved either way (there's as much as there was before).
I don't have any numbers to back it up, but even if it's not more common, it's certainly more impactful with all of the "wrongthink" being silenced.
> Overt racism, antivax anti-science shouldn't be excused with free speech
Your second claim is more interesting, because I keep seeing people repeat the claims that Joe Rogan is "antivax & anti-science". Keep in mind, I don't follow his podcast, but I watched the full episode with Robert Malone after the social media outcry started.
The conclusion that I came to is that he's not "anti-science" - that would imply that he doesn't believe in the scientific method. What people really mean when they say that he's anti-science is that he came to different conclusions than they did after considering the evidence (or lack thereof), therefore he's wrong, and since his critics view themselves as "pro-science", Joe must be anti-science.
But whether or not he's wrong, it doesn't have anything to do with freedom of speech. If you do believe that he's wrong, call him out publicly, write a blog post detailing why he's wrong, record your own podcast and debunk any claims he or his guests made, with evidence. Be the opposing voice and present rational counter-arguments.
Bad research gets published all the time and "science" is not some singular entity that only consists of homogeneous ideas, and that's not even taking into account all of the conflicts of interest that exist for the pharma industry in publishing research that stands to make them $billions.
This is why it's important to allow an open and free discussion of opposing viewpoints, it's the only way of advancing human knowledge and widespread acceptance of your ideas in an open and free society. Censoring someone because you disagree with them is not going to change their (or their viewers') mind.
> which doesn't in any way impact wether or not and who can criticise what
If I risk getting censored, "cancelled", having my livelihood taken away for voicing my opposing views (which aren't violent nor bigoted, just a simple disagreement on the topic of scientific research), I would argue that very much impacts who can criticize what.
> Overt racism, antivax anti-science shouldn't be excused with free speech, which doesn't in any way impact wether or not and who can criticise what.
All those things are covered under "free speech". There's no legal definition for "hate speech", or "anti-vax speech" or "anti-science speech". They are all ALLOWED.
> All those things are covered under "free speech". There's no legal definition for "hate speech", or "anti-vax speech" or "anti-science speech". They are all ALLOWED.
In the USA, and not everybody lives there. Heck, Spotify, the company in question, is Swedish.
Hate speech has plenty of definitions in plenty of different countries, with varying levels ( e.g. in France blatant overt racism is illegal, in Thailand it's "stoking negative feelings in people" or some other bullshit ).
> Hate speech has plenty of definitions in plenty of different countries, with varying levels ( e.g. in France blatant overt racism is illegal, in Thailand it's "stoking negative feelings in people" or some other bullshit ).
I'll take the US model since it's clearly superior.
Dismissing someone's bullshit (even if the dismissal is exaggerated, which i don't think it is) isn't really comparable to that someone convincing people that magic snake oil will cure them of a disease.
“I'm not saying everyone dissenting from the generally accepted opinions should be fully banned from the Internet or sent to jail”
What are you saying, exactly? We just fine them increasing amounts of money until they agree with the “generally accepted opinions?”
Who gets to decide what the generally accepted opinions are? How do we even know they’re right? Why does everybody have to agree on everything? Your musings are, quite frankly, childish. People are entitled to their incorrect opinions.
If you want to end climate change denialism or anti-vaccine sentiment, discuss the facts with people who sympathize with those viewpoints. Convince them on the evidence. Find better evidence if you can’t.
The people like yourself who want to engage in censorship never have the truth on their side. There’d be no reason to censor anything if you did: just lead with the truth instead. Let the facts speak for themselves. The fact that you can’t convince people of your “facts” is proof that you your ideas are garbage.
By all means though, continue to push for censorship. It will only increase the skepticism and distrust of the “generally accepted opinions” held by polite society.
> What are you saying, exactly? We just fine them increasing amounts of money until they agree with the “generally accepted opinions
Maybe? Alex Jones still hasn't accepted reality regarding the Sandy Hook massacre, even after losing a trial. Éric Zemmour still peddles blatantly racist and false information after being fined multiple times for it. Is there a way to even stop that kind of person? Anyone listening to them ( and Trump, and Nigel Farage, and Boris Johnson) obviously isn't interested in facts, because everything out of their mouths is easily debunkable with a few minutes online
> If you want to end climate change denialism or anti-vaccine sentiment, discuss the facts with people who sympathize with those viewpoints. Convince them on the evidence. Find better evidence if you can’t.
That doesn't work and hasn't for years. You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.
> The people like yourself who want to engage in censorship never have the truth on their side. There’d be no reason to censor anything if you did: just lead with the truth instead. Let the facts speak for themselves. The fact that you can’t convince people of your “facts” is proof that you your ideas are garbage.
That's an entirely useless personal attack. I never claimed any facts, I'm claiming that people peddling easily debunked bullshit they pass as fact can't be allowed to do this constantly without repercussions. Because they are causing real life harm and using "it's just my opinion, I'm just asking questions" as a shitty excuse.
All governments spread misinformation on purpose? I suppose it's too much to ask for proof on that?
Maybe you mean the initial mask conundrum? That was evolving guidance based on realities ( not enough masks) and current understanding of a changing situation. It was pretty much everyone, led by the WHO, though, but it was only kind of wrong ( I don't know about the whole world, but in France the official line was that "masks don't help you not get infected by much, there aren't enough of them and most people wouldn't know how to use them properly, so there's no need for everyone to wear a mask", which evolved to "masks stop you spreading, so everyone wear a mask").
So, all governments officially said all of those while knowing them to be untrue? That's a bold claim ( i live in France and don't recall anything of the like on any of them). Care to share some sources?
I can also add the lie about 90% of patients in ICU being non-vaxed. We were later told that it was a misinterpretation of the available data.
Etc etc. It became kind of a meme: when Olivier Veran says something will never be done, it ends up done quite soon. I was about to get this vaccine. But those blatant lies deterred me from doing so.
It's not lying to change one's opinion, or to be mistaken. Lying needs intent. Véran changing his opinion or being overruled by Macron doesn't mean any one of them is lying on purpose for some nebulous purpose.
> Maybe? Alex Jones still hasn't accepted reality regarding the Sandy Hook massacre, even after losing a trial. Éric Zemmour still peddles blatantly racist and false information after being fined multiple times for it. Is there a way to even stop that kind of person? Anyone listening to them ( and Trump, and Nigel Farage, and Boris Johnson) obviously isn't interested in facts, because everything out of their mouths is easily debunkable with a few minutes online
Do you have any examples of left-wingers producing misinformation? You know, people on CNN or MSNBC? Or are you going to produce only right-wing examples because you live in an absolute bubble and have no ability to see that there is daily misinformation on all corporate-owned networks: Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, etc... and even in a very egregious way.
It is clear to me that you only read Democratic-party aligned news sources and have a terribly biased and skewed worldview where apparently only "tHe RiGhT-WiNgErS aRe RaCiSt hurr durr". Your guy Joe Biden has produced more racist outcomes with his Crime Bill than Donald Trump has ever done in his tweets.
Nice attempt at whataboutism, but I'm talking about specific examples of egregious misinformation that is kind of dangerous. If you have anything of substance to add besides handwaving "the other side in my broken two party country is also bad and lies about inconsequential stuff while the one i like literally spreads medical misinformation resulting in people dying", do so. For the record, both your parties are rightwing, one is just far-right while the other is centre-right. Both are full of idiots, but one is obviously worse, which is sad for the people opposed to the policies of the less bad one ( because they have no other options).
You have also spewed well known lie by claiming that Ivermectin is a horse medicine, while it is first and foremost human medicine which was only later on appropriated for veterinary purposes. There are studies on Ivermectin's effectiveness for COVID, some of which are ongoing, and calling it a "horse dewormer" is a clear smear tactic -- definitely not by an innocent actor. I personally went back-and-forth on whether Ivermectin was actually effective for early treatment on COVID. But whatever the ultimate answer is, censoring discussion about it, or lying by calling it animal medicine is clearly a dishonest tactic.
I do not care about Republican or Democart parties. I care about the truth. And now that we have access to both primary sources, studies and multiple sources of informations, no one has to take the establishment narrative at face value -- which is something done in corporate news channels such as CNN and MSNBC. At this point it's better to watch Tucker Carlson on Fox, because at least there you'll get an anti-establishment view, which any decent person should always strive for.
As I said before, I am triple-vaxxed. I am not against vaccines, but I am against the lies, power grabs and censorship that have plagued us since the beginning of this pandemic. The push for the vaccines has forced mainstream media and tech companies to censor any discussion on potential early treatments that were being researched (hydroxychrloroquine [which now we know is not effective], ivermectin, monocolonal antibodies, etc...), some of which were actually proven to be very effective. This is absolutely insane. The vaccine itself is not 100% effective, so why silence this information?
It is funny how when the vaccine was developed under Trump, both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were "promoting vaccine hesitancy" a crime which now gets you deplatformed and declared a social pariah: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/campaign-press-rel...
I don't even want to get started about the inaccurate COVID mortality reporting, and how actually extremely low the deaths from COVID-only are, especially for people younger than 50 - as opposed of people dying "with COVID" and a ton of other comorbidities.
Parent Comment was referring to Joe Rogan frequently asserting that Ivermectin is an effective treatment for COVID. There is no evidence that this is true, and in fact, off-label and unsupervised use of a drug like ivermectin is incredibly dangerous. The misinformation about ivermectin forms a tent-pole in his incredibly dangerous war against the COVID vaccine.
No one is arguing Ivermectin isn't an amazing horse dewormer...
At least in the US, ivermectin requires a prescription to obtain. This means a medical professional (MD or nurse practitioner) believes it is safe for use with that individual and they are supervising it.
This is a misleading rebuttal. There were countless stories about feed stores running out of stock or having to limit sales because people were buying it for personal use in huge volumes. There was literally a US wide shortage of agricultural ivermectin in August/September, and I’m not sure if it’s gotten any better.
His previous method of distribution was YouTube, which notoriously removes and demonetizes content without warning or appeal, so the move to Spotify was meant to guard against that.
I suppose at this point he could easily fund hosting the content himself if he can get out of the contract with Spotify.
We may agree by this definition. But when the public redefine podcast as something else, like “recorded talkshow audio”, you can only reinforce the definition so much.
this looks alarmingly like a destruction of wrongthink. comedians, musicians, joes friends. this isnt just the rambling conspiracies of alex jones or covid skepticism with non-consensus doctors.
rather than debate the meaning of IP, free markets, or the first amendment, we should he focusing on us - the people. our communites.
why is it that companies think its advantageous to silence people like this? it must be following the money. spotify is following the zeitgeist. the fact that everyone would rather erase this content because its existence is unbearable is a warning side. engendering disgust is a half step from dehumanization, and dehumanization is a half step from death.
I see the de-platforming and censoring of comedians specifically as being extremely concerning. Comedians in theory should not be a threat to anyone. To me this is the canary in the coalmine. What this tells me is that we as a society can't handle criticisms any longer.
The comedians are extremely important to our society, because they have a way of saying things that need to be said that others are often afraid to. In fact when something is funny, its because our minds weren't able to predict the outcome. This is what worries me most, because we are seeing the comedians get silenced for laughing and joking around about political issues. Sure they're just having fun, but they are pointing things out and creating memes that spread through society that need to be heard. If they can't criticize certain ideologies and look at topics from a different perspective, we lose our ability as a society to realign ourselves to improve upon the situation that caused hilarity.
Once the comedians go, then we know people can't just joke around about certain topics. And then we know other forms of silencing are on its way.
There are plenty of comedians joking around COVID, conspiracy theories, vaccines, and making people laugh.
Joe Rogan as a comedian is very different than Joe Rogan as a podcaster. He tries to be a very serious podcaster, and brings in serious people to debate serious subjects.
But he treats them all with the same respect and reverence. Which is a good attitude to take with people you meet 1on1, but may not be a dispassionate neutral position when you have a massive audience of tens of millions.
So when he brings in an astrophysicists and they teach the audience about the lifecycle of stars, it's educational and people both learn and are entertained. And the next guest is a conspiracy nut with a lot of PhDs that tells everyone COVID is overplayed and vaccines don't work, they also learn and are entertained.
Rogan has a sizeable enough audience that the impact of his COVID misinformation can be included as one of the reasons why Americans have so much COVID vaccine hesitancy, and directly contributes to the elevated COVID death toll in the US.
All I see is an expert in a field, who I can't tell if they are right or not, disagreeing with other experts in the same field, who I also can't tell if they are right or not.
Americans are ruthlessly free spirits with a disrespect for herd mentality and overglorification of extreme individualism. No amount of COVID information nor misinformation has anything to do with vaccine hesitancy.
Being american is in many ways being rebellious. Vaccine mandates go in opposition to this very american spirit, a spirit of irreverance, rock and roll. Misinformation has nothing to do with why americans are refusing to get vaccinated. Informing them further wont change this fact, america would not have been founded without a rebellious spirit.
Your imposition of your beliefs by the way, are not to protect the other americans, its for your own "salvation". You want so desperately to be right, you're willing to only look at information that aligns with your belief system. You want your enemies to be wrong and you want them punished for not holding the same beliefs you do. If you really cared about the people who are not choosing to get vaccinated, you would let them be free to make their own choices, even if it means their death.
I repeat this over and over again. Everyone who wants to get vaccinated is vaccinated. Everyone who's willing to take the risk of not being vaccinated is willing to die for their freedom. There is nothing stopping us from opening up now. Its just theater for one side to blame the other for not being good little sheep. The anti-mandaters have been ready to open up for months now, and they don't care if they die, they don't care if they lose their jobs, they don't care if they are ostracized. Honk if your horny!
If only the ones pointing fingers saying we can't open up because of the unvaxxed, would stop crying and realize that we have been able to open up already for a long time now, we would be able to open up. But alas, it seems people aren't here to solve problems but to be angry, point fingers, and blame others for a situation which they can fix themselves. I'll repeat that one more time, you aren't here to debate or ameliorate or fix the situation, because if you were we would have been done with this a long time ago.
You're here because you want to be angry at the people who refuse stand on your side of the field like drunk men in a football stadium harassing anyone who wears the other color. And this is why you care so much about getting the unvaccinated vaccinated, not to save their lives. Oh no. you relish it when there's news of people who lie in hospital beds regretting not getting the vaccine. You relish in that schadenfreude, you relish in it because you are so desperate to be right, unable to realize its not about any information/misinformation/disinformation. Its about rebellion, you're just mad that some people just don't play along.
Looking through the deleted episodes, most of them aren't even the scientists and pundits in opposition to globalist narratives. They're comedians, actors, and musicians. I am clearly out of the loop. Why would Spotify remove episodes with Kevin Smith and Brian Posehn? I love both of these comedians/writers, but they're largely in-line with Spotify's neoliberal viewpoints, are they not?
I doubt Michael Malice and Ari Shaffir requested their episode be removed. Also, it's unlikely that such a concerted effort would take place within days by a large number of Joe's guests.
interesting guess, but it can only be part of the story if its true at all. a lot of those people are Joe's best friends that would more likely go down in flames than abandon him (ari, bert, tom, bill).
a more likely angle is some intermediary like publishers or managers are making decisions through contracts or deals.
That's pretty pathetic if you ask me. Did they not express viewpoints on Joe Rogan they wanted the world to hear? Pulling down their own episodes also makes it appear that they were spreading misinformation.
Did we all miss the part where Rogan talked about the different racially-related comments he made on these episodes earlier today? Doesn't matter who the guest is, an N-bomb can be dropped at any time.
You're making it sound like Spotify is a neutral host of Rogan's IP. That's not the case at all. Spotify bought exclusive rights to Rogan's episodes and then gave him a massive deal to produce more under their banner. This is Spotify deciding to silence themselves.
When JRE went to Spotify many people were hailing it as an anti-cancellation move. They clearly misunderstood.. the podcast was decentralized (even if your podcast host shuts you down you can serve the rss and mp3s from somewhere else). And Youtube was another avenue of distribution. Centralization makes you more vulnerable to getting particular content vetoed.
I mean, for every person here who says they’re canceling service, there’s another few who will happily support Spotify because they either don’t care or they want to see JR removed. Who cares if you do it? I’m not being snarky, just staring a fact.
Exactly, got the premium membership to support them in this Joe Rogan madness, but cancelled today because of the episode removals. Shortest subscription ever.
It was only a question of time before the all-out war on Rogan began. He's way too big and off-key to permit him to keep going. The concept of free speech in the US is a mirage: you have it right up to the line where it matters or can threaten power centers, then you don't.
Every major institution is united to destroy Rogan, including the WH. The Press Secretary -- speaking on behalf of the US Govt -- demanded Spotify do more to stop him, and this is treated as normal and benign. Ask Julian Assange if effective dissent is permitted.
The power derived from controlling the flow of information is immense. That's why every tyrant and authoritarian wields censorship power. Tyranny can't exist without it. And as Orwell and Chomsky have both said, the most effective form isn't jailing dissidents but doing this.
Read what Orwell said about why censorship in the UK during the war was so much more effective than the overtly autocratic regimes that just imprisoned dissidents.
We're at the point where we also arrive in these cycles. If you object to the attempt to silence Rogan, then you will be instantly tarred with the same brush used to try to destroy him: You're a racist, anti-vax, etc. etc. That's the enforcement mechanism to keep everyone quiet.
> It was only a question of time before the all-out war on Rogan began.
Apparently those 70 episodes have racial slurs in. It's not really an "all-out war on Rogan" as much as "Spotify don't want to be seen to be hosting racial slurs in their most visibly public content that they made a specific point of paying $$$ for", right?
Comedian: 45,
Political Commentator/Media Personality: 8,
Brian Redban: 5,
Health/Fitness: 2,
Scientist: 2,
Author: 2,
Musician: 1,
Pornstar: 1,
(MMA) Fight Companion: 1,
Giorgio Tsoukalos,
Kevin Smith,
Cliffy B & Johnny Cristo (can't even figure out who these last two are)
They've removed comedians mostly because they talk about "sensitive" issues openly and without taboos, oftentimes politically incorrect and careless: ex. transgender and alike themes. Isn't this what comedy should be like? [1]
Comedy is not equal to being offensive. Being offensive is not itself comedy.
Some comedy is offensively misinformed and still legitimately funny at the same time (e.g. Chapelle had some parts that made me chuckle, and some parts where I dreaded stereotypes about me being reinforced). But some is just bad. Look at Steven Crowder doing "comedy" for instance.
That aside, I'd rather they had removed Abigail Shrier, who is not a comedian but an author of a book full of falsehoods and anecdotes that contributes to a hateful environment that has measurably increased violence against LGBT+ people (up ~100% in the past 5 years in the UK). Or at least for the JRE to have ANY trans person providing different context. Chelsea Manning would be amazing, but I'm not sure if she'd be interested either.
You're right it's not the same, but the same thing with Gervais's presentation, for some it's offensive, for some hilarious. I support comedy in general, not cancel culture though.
There needs to be a balance of interests. I don't know where the line is and I don't want to set it, but misrepresenting minorities to the point you're furthering their marginalization is beyond the line.
There's a lot of nuance lost upon invoking "cancel culture" ("So you've been publicly shamed" is the one piece of media that seems to successfully avoid doing so), and I generally dislike the term because it is often used either in offhand comments by people who don't see the issue or by free speech absolutists that disagree the paradox of tolerance even exists.
That aside, invoking false stereotypes doesn't generally make for exceptional comedy.
I see a lot of speculating like this and if you know these people you know they wouldn't have requested it.
Michael Malice had 2 of his episodes pulled and just did a YouTube about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-1MHKIRUow. He did not request them to be removed and Joe did not either.
It's likely given that the episodes with Robert Malone (the controversial MRNA Vaccine creator) is still up that these recent take-downs are the result of some new algorithmic reviewer.
People on Reddit for instance have noted that many of these episodes talked about race and may have used racial epithets or alluded to race-based issues somehow and may have gotten automatically flagged or some such.
I heard comedians have a hard time doing shows on University campuses these days. The huge amount of comedian episodes being removed seems consistent with that trend.
Having worked with computers before, the explanation I am leaning to based on zero evidence is that there is a bug somewhere, possibly in the tool used to make the determination about which episodes have been 'removed'
Jesus. A lot of indiscriminate nuking of content with the Feb 4 date. Tim Ferriss, Comedian Russell Peters, Dan Savage, Giorgio Tsoulakis (the "It's Aliens" guy), Kyle Kulinski. What a shit show.
I'd love for someone to get Neil Young's take on this now.
And maybe, ya know, Spotify's reasoning before we assume that all of these removals are Young's fault.
Edit: Oh look, it's not just because Young made a stink about COVID shit, imagine that...
>Rogan went on Instagram Saturday to discuss the content of the old episodes, addressing two videos on social media of him saying a racial slur and another where he described a Black neighborhood as being similar to the Planet of the Apes movie.
Why do they need to remove the whole episodes though? Can't they just put a voice over through that part of the show?
"beep.. beep.. Spotify has had to interrupt this podcast as the next few moments contain words and ideas we deem to impure for our listeners to hear.. beep beep.." and that's why you shouldn't do DMT after eating a burrito.
The answer to that can be found in a statement that Spotify's CEO made during a company town hall earlier this week[1]...
>"A publisher has editorial control over a creator’s content — they can take action on the content before it’s even published,” he says, like editing episodes, removing guests, or preventing one from publishing at all. Ek noted that Spotify does have editorial control over the properties it owns outright, like The Ringer and Gimlet, but emphasized the distinction between those studios and Rogan. “Even though JRE is an exclusive, it is licensed content. It is important to note that we do not have creative control over Joe Rogan’s content. We don’t approve his guests in advance, and just like any other creator, we get his content when he publishes, and then we review it, and if it violates our policies, we take the appropriate enforcement actions.”
So contractually speaking, they can't edit the content, essentially making it all-or-nothing when it comes to an episode. If Rogan feels strongly enough about having an episode put back up but with the kind of edit you suggested, then the onus to do so is on him, not Spotify. That's the deal that Rogan signed.
I grew up around evangelical Christians. The negative reaction to Rogan *feels* exactly like the clucking and tutting about 'dangerous ideas' that I've heard from the more cellophane elements of that crew.
The thing that is so hard for me to wrap my head around is that it is the LEFT who is doing it this time. I never would have imagined my "team" being the one to do it. In fact, I have to wonder what it is that I "am" anymore.
The "left" is no more immune to controlling thought than the right -- just look at China or the USSR
The danger is authoritarianism and centralisation, and in terms of centralisation big tech companies like Spotify have in spades. You could also feasibly argue they're authoritarian as no-one outside the company can influence policy outside of free market forces, but centralisation can make these companies somewhat immune to said forces, for instance Spotify being the exclusive distributor of Joe Rogan podcasts means those interested in his content have no choice but to continue using Spotify, even though some of his podcasts have been removed.
I had this crisis several years ago with the whole "Jordan Peterson controversy". I found myself listening to a man who told me how to get out of my depression when everyone around me thought he was an evil bad man, but they were all miserable people who definitely didn't help. So I stopped hanging out with them. My life got objectively better, too. I wouldn't consider myself a Jordan Peterson fanatic, but that was when I really realized I wasn't whatever the "left" wanted me to be.
I grew up same as you, and you took the words out of my mouth.
People who grew up secular are completely unaware of how Southern Baptist in style all of this canceling and moralizing is. Like the church ladies, they turn moralizing into a competitive sport, and everyone loses.
Spot on, though I think it's not just an issue of 'dangerous ideas', it's more an issue of can the layperson think at all for themself. I.e. less 'free speech' and more dark-ageish 'only these are allowed to speak' problem.
Very fair point, it wasn't my intent to disparage broadly.
>heard from the more cellophane elements of that crew
I should have made this distinction more clear. There are evangelical Christians whom I love dearly and hold in the highest regard. I don't want to call anyone a 'fake' Christian but there are definitely those that just seem to be focused purely on what others should and should not be doing. That's the kind I'm talking about here.
I think you misread. The feeling described is about peoples reaction to Joe Rogan (like his tacit support for anti-vaccine ideology) and how evangelicals have the same reaction to things they don't like (like rights for women).
As far as I can tell evangelicals and many other Christian denominations are some of the biggest cancellers to ever exist. The left cancels, too, of course. And only now that the left's actions are becoming broadly effective folks are finally talking about how cancellations affect society.
OP(?) here, gunapologist99 makes a good point in that I painted with too broad a brush stroke.
Most of the evangelicals I know are actually amazing people and are not like this at all. They are generous, kind, forgiving...but they are also humble and quiet and don't make a bunch of noise or stir up trouble. Unless you live with them, nobody really hears about this kind of Christian.
Its just that there is a certain vein of folk that really focus on what everyone else should and should not be doing. Kenneth Copeland style. That's who I was referencing, but did a sloppy job of distinguishing them.
Yes, because religious activities were at or near the center of everyday life for many. It was the topic of discussion during meals. It defined people and their personalities. Now politics has taken that place, and I'm not sure we're better that way.
At least with religion we mostly know what is supposed to be right and wrong. It's exhausting when it changes every month and something innocent I said last month is taken as an awful slight next month
Conservative like the people that the old hippies used to call squares. The people who wanted you to fall in line and get a hair cut, get a job, and stop listening to that evil music.
How does a deworming paste kill an entire organism without harming the host? Do you have a grasp of the mechanism of action? Why is it unlikely that it would have anti-viral effects? My intuition is you have absolutely no idea.
Do some searching and dig in. If you spent a few days reading articles about how this works you might see a possibility of it having some benefit in this case. It's ok to read, you're not going to hurt anyone because nobody is going to ask you (or me) for your opinion on the matter, but you would at least have a basis for why you think the way you do.
Ivermectin may or may not help people with covid, i have no idea. My point is that dismissing it outright based on tabloid characterizations is not helpful. It’s propaganda.
Open Web is truly dead.
It's such a shame too. Learning other people's view, even if you don't agree with them is an important part growing.
I have to say, I am quite resentful of people now. Because there was such amazing tool that you could learn other people's view and thoughts and a handful of loud mouths killed it.
Why would it be dead, if you can find the missing episodes on the Open Web?
Also, why would a content service policing its own content be in any way related to "The Open Web"?
Now if the domain providers, ICANN, ISPs, or any such internet utility entities would be actively doing this, that'd be a story about the web openness. Not a large streaming service deciding what to stream. Joe himself sold out to this entity knowing about this precise outcome. This has nothing to do with the web itself.
It only dies if we surround ourselves in walled gardens, and fail to build the platforms that incentivize open inquiry. We've traded so much for the convenience of not doing it ourselves. As long as one hyperlinked document remains at the far reaches of a TCP/IP network, the Web still lives. The content you're seeking is out there, and the audience for the unconventional is growing.
We can easily find these deleted episodes hosted elsewhere on the web. Legally? Maybe not, but they're still out there on the open web, and so are similar views and statements to those that Spotify opted not to host.
"Spotify deletes AN ADDITIONAL 71 Joe Rogan episodes"
Seems 42 episodes have been gone since around the article you posted (March-April 2021). Now 113 episodes are gone in total.
So are Spotify likely to remove more episodes soon when they waited almost a year since the last time? Hard to tell. The pressure on Spotify is probably higher this time.
Joe Rogan fans also seem to have endured the last batch of removals well. Perhaps this batch will anger them more since the "stakes" are higher due to the unusually heated controversy at the moment.
Or perhaps it will all be business as usual in a few months time.
> CEO Daniel Ek has defended the inclusion of Rogan on the company's roster and told a company town hall that the podcast was vital to Spotify's success.
> "If we want even a shot at achieving our bold ambitions, it will mean having content on Spotify that many of us may not be proud to be associated with," Ek said during the town hall. "Not anything goes, but there will be opinions, ideas and beliefs that we disagree with strongly and even makes us angry or sad."
Unlikely, most of the guests that were removed have other appearances on show that are still up, and most of them are his friends and long time supporters.
What is more likely is that they have controversial bit or two on them so they got flagged. There are episodes that have Joe Rogan say the N-word (not directed towards anyone and in-context, something he addressed today) could be that it was these episodes that were removed.
That is extremely unlikely to be true. The guests don't own the copyright, so they can't leverage that. Also, some of the guests are protesting this on Twitter.
This was my thought too but I can't seem to find anything from Spotify's new policy that touches on content removal for subjects unwilling to appear on a recorded podcast. Maybe legal disputes could be playing a hand here, however the timing is too convenient. Easiest answer seems to be Spotify is doing some cleaning on their yard after the recent backlash.
It looks like they went on rampage yesterday and removed a bunch of episodes. I don't recognize the names (and there too many) so I don't know why that even happened. I have watched a number of JREs and this is odd. I like Spotify a lot but I have no issue leaving them if this is the new policy. There are a lot of music services out there and Spotify shines because of the podcasts.
I actually listened to that one and even though I don't agree with everything that was discussed during that 3 hour interview, a few things struck me as odd in the huge wave of criticism that followed.
- Dr Malone has a rather impressive CV and a rather relevant one when it comes to Covid. This is a point that is glossed over by most media. He's not some crackpot theorist but somebody with a rather impressive research career centered on doing research around major virus outbreaks. Or at least that's what Joe Rogan spends about an hour of the interview trying to establish as the ground truth. Like him or not, when somebody like that says something, you might want to listen. Or if that reputation has some flaws, an eager fact checker might want to highlight that. Instead it was glossed over. If this is somehow not true, I've yet to find an article challenging that reputation.
- In the podcast, Dr Malone and Rogan discuss the cancel culture and the fact that several notable colleagues of his have had to deal with that. To the point where medical licenses were cancelled. And that he too has been under attack following a rather negative piece in the Atlantic.
- Some pretty harsh criticism is voiced towards Pfizer and the FDA's failure to do its job in overseeing the way Pfizer rushed the vaccine to market and maybe cut a few corners with testing protocols. Those are serious accusations. When they are made by somebody with Malone's apparent reputation, a serious journalist might want to fact check them. I've not seen any attempt at that.
- During the interview, Dr. Malone singles out the Atlantic article that criticized him and the author of that article as an inexperienced "woke" journalist that basically got their facts wrong. And then every other mainstream media goes on to use specifically that article as the core basis for "cancelling" Malone. What happened to allowing the other side to counter? Isn't that what you are supposed to do as a good journalist?
You don't have to agree with any of what was discussed during that interview of course but I find it notable that mainstream media gloss over most of that and fail to fact check any of it. There are some rather serious issues that were discussed in this interview that as of yet have not been challenged and instead are simply ignored.
For example, I read a pretty harsh article on the BBC a few days ago that was actually attempting to "fact check" exactly this episode on a few things and it left me wondering if they'd even bothered to listen to this episode or whether I actually listened to the same thing. A Guardian actually mentioned the Atlantic article. Neither of them gave Malone an opportunity to respond. Given the amount of time spent during the podcast discussing exactly that article, that is more than a bit sloppy.
I noticed as well the bias in Rogan's interview and maybe a bit eagerly jumping to conclusions by Joe Rogan. For me that falls under free speech. But still, it was an interesting exchange and packed with a lot of detail and well argued opinions that, as of yet, remain mostly unchallenged. That worries me.
For reference, I got vaccinated, boostered, and will get another shot. But I have a few growing concerns regarding the special status of Pfizer at this point and their apparent influence over mainstream media and politicians to basically run what looks like a character assassination campaign. There's plenty there for a serious journalist to fact check. Maybe the most worrying thing is the apparent self censure ship mainstream media seem to be applying to themselves.
I appreciate your perspective here. I feel like the whole world is crazy if I have to dig 3-4 pages before finding an analysis like this.
I suppose that's representative of how we're seeing so many folks gloss over Dr. Malone's CV and so many other facts about this podcast in particular. Could it just be a criticism bandwagon where no one is _actually_ listening to Rogan?
From my observations most people don't even know that Malone was on the show. Most criticism that I've seen during this latest drama is targeted directly at Joe Rogan himself. It very much feels like a bandwagon against "bro science", even if wildly misjudged.
The problem with Malone is that his theories are in disagreement with the vast majority of subject matter experts. His CV, while real, isn't without issues, and his involvement in mRNA research is often misrepresented in the sense that it fails to mention he was just one of hundreds of researchers that contributed to getting where we are today, and that his contribution rests on experiments over 30 years ago.
Science doesn't work flawlessly, nor does it rely on some magical subset of the population deemed "scientists" having perfect knowledge and judgement. The rest of the process matters, precisely because scientists make mistakes likely at rates not really any different than anybody else. By waving Malone's scientist credentials, JR is implicitly saying that this story is science, but that whole angle is actually anti-science! Credentials alone don't define the scientific process.
Furthermore, people haven't internalized how difficult much of this is. Scientists make mistakes all the time because despite professionalism interpreting data isn't easy, and even peer review doesn't catch most errors. As a symptom of that consider what's underlying the replication crisis in science (which doesn't affect all science equally). Interpreting messy data with lots of confounders and imperfect experimental setups, imperfect measurements of those confounders, imperfect statistical models that simplify distribution characteristics, imperfect statistical tools that cannot capture all higher order effects, imperfect generalization from the specific experiment to the interesting take-home claim, etc etc etc may well be impossible in most cases. Finding the few nuggets of truth where we can cut through all that trickiness is not easy. And identifying flaws in such research is not easy either; experts get it wrong all the time. That's OK, that's normal. The hope isn't that every scientific claim is perfect, it's that the system eventually converges to a slightly better understanding of the world than we have now.
If Malone wants to present his interpretation to his peers: that's great, and fine. They're used to uncertainty, and have the best tools and training to deal with the cognitive dissonance of having lots of partially contradictory research. But his arguments seem to have failed to convince them - at least I'm not hearing much backup. However, cherry-picking "experts" with non-conventional views and presenting their interpretation to an audience that cannot interpret the uncertainty behind Malone's claims while supporting his credentials is essentially lying to listeners; you're encouraging them to draw false conclusions.
People are social animals; we're uniquely good at learning - and copying from - others. It's that copying that is our greatest strength, while also being a risk when mixed up with mass-media's ability to selectively amplify voices. And we all run our economies fully embracing that; which is why businesses hire experts and try to avoid all kinds of biases when it hits their bottom line; it's why advertisements work as a business; it's why we talk about propaganda and use information warfare in actual military conflicts. People aren't very good at filtering and processing information; they're great at _copying_ it and distributing that knowledge through social circles. Knowledge is power, but it's also a vulnerability.
If we cannot acknowledge our cognitive weaknesses, we cannot prevent being ruled by them. To put it another way: memes are real, and have the power to control us if we're not careful. Giving Malone an unfiltered megaphone through which to amplify what most other experts appear to conclude is nonsense is not being careful.
Yes, I just scrolled and scrolled and did not recognise any name and I was expecting to find Malone or McCullough and didn't. What on earth was on all those removed podcasts?
I feel like the tail-end of Web 1.0 (generally decentralised protocols/processes) with broadband speeds was really a golden age, peaking around the early to mid 2000s. Once the Web 2.0 train arrived, centralisation into large corps that could do arbitrary cancellations (whether it's locking you out of your Google or Oculus accounts, or getting removed from Twitter or Spotify) really just made the web a lot less interesting for information discovery and sharing.
Blockchain aside, I do find it amusing that we can basically go back to 2005 tools to avoid some of this accelerating authoritarianism. Rip podcasts to MP3s, torrent or email them around. Same with movies, video clips, etc. Sure, mass distribution becomes less instant, but nobody can argue that Doom wasn't popular when it was released just because it wasn't on Steam or whatever.
India Arie already bailed on Spotify because she didn't want to be associated with Rogaine's race related bullshit. She's explicitly stated that she's indifferent to his COVID misinformation. That was all over one episode. Undoubtedly there's more, it's just a question of how much more.
I agree that as a publisher who paid a hefty sum for the exclusive rights to the content, they 100% have the right to do this.
I'm just saying this general trend of cancellation and suppressing views that don't fit squarely in the box of "whatever society accepts at the moment" (which by the way changes by the minute) is troubling.
We have always done this. Since the beginning of our species. We live under a society of consensus. We believe in stuff because our parents told us to believe, however silly it might be. There never was a point in history where someone could say everything they wanted without having the consequences of their speech.
The way TV always had a censor to filter out what was deemed bad, now for no reason at all the same is happening on tech. They assume everyone is a child and they have to be the parent. At the very least they could put an EXPLICIT filter on like they do with songs, because we should all assume once you are 18 you can do a half decent job of deciding what is bullshit for yourself.
The anti-censorship comments here of course resonate with me, but I'm curious about the legality of this. Spotify advertised Rogan and sold paid subscriptions. Now they've unilaterally removed the ability to listen from millions of paying customers, at least some of whom subscribed exclusively for the purpose of listening to JRE. Do these customers have no recourse?
Unfortunately I fear we'll have to wait until web3 enables some sort of DRM-replacing copy-supporting NFTs for song/podcast/game/etc copy ownership rights. Legally the major publishers, platforms, and stores have license clauses allowing them to revoke their hosted access to digital media you "bought", so the alternative might be decentralized copyright and file hosting.
You don’t buy rights to anything when you use a subscription service like Spotify. You’re paying for the right to stream things in their current catalog.
Buying perpetual rights to content is possible with the current web. I buy DRM free MP3s and have been for decades.
I love Joe. I use Spotify exclusively to listen to his podcast. I listen to every episode… I wish there was a way to tell them if it wasn’t for his show I’d never use their app but I suspect they already know that.
Unfortunately I think attacks on his having been prescribed ivermectin and his guests like the highly published cardiologist and the guy that contracts with the defense department and has patents related to MRNA really got on his nerves and recently he’s been leaning too hard into the “mainstream media lies” discussions, it’s nearly bordering on an obsession. I was surprised he was even discussing it with Jim Gaffigan.
We’re at a very bad place in American discourse. In a recent episode (past 2 weeks) Bill Maher quoted some survey that nearly a majority of Americans believe that we’re headed towards a civil war.
Attacking, degrading, deplatforming and silencing our fellow citizens is only going to push us further towards the brink.
I still listen to every other podcast through the Apple Podcasts app. The nice thing about the Spotify exclusive podcast was it is much easier to skip ads. JRE is the only podcast I’ve listened to on Spotify that has first party ads you can just fast forward through.
It was an NPR pledge drive that really drove me to podcasts
This is a theme in "Fall or Dodge in Hell". In a future where people are bombarded with so much information, people rely on editors to curate their streams. Poorer people can't afford good editors, so they're fed incoherent garbage. This creates a schism when a big event happens. People can't even agree on whether the event happened or not. It's not the main story, but an interesting part nonetheless.
Well, nyt and wapo got a Pulitzer for a made up collusion, and most don't even know that Durham report has claimed it was so (made up) and therefor pulitzers were badly earned. Still think media is honest?
It was also the NYT's Walter Duranty [1] that covered up Stalin's mass murder of millions in the Ukrainian Holodomor [2], and also, Stalin's purges and show trials. He didn't just cover up the Holodomor, or the Russian starvation, he actually fake fact-checked it in true Facebook fashion, writing the following "Any report of a famine in Russia is today an exaggeration or malignant propaganda. The food shortage, however, which has affected the whole population in the last year and particularly in the grain-producing provinces – the Ukraine, North Caucasus [i.e. Kuban Region], and the Lower Volga – has, however, caused heavy loss of life", and in doing so, refuted the reporting of Gareth Jones.
I didn’t mean to imply that they were always honest or aren’t agenda driven. Unlike Joe Rogan of late, it doesn’t come up too often / isn’t something I want to inject into every conversation I have.
For example I’m always annoyed when I see the treatment of Julian Assange and how the corporate press ignores or denigrates him.
If I’m having a 3 hour chat with Jim Gaffigan in public or private I’m not going to bring it up even once.
If I would chat with Bill Maher or Edward Snowden for 3 hours I’d assume it’d come up.
Joe just injects it into all of his discussions. I can understand why he would be bothered by the attacks on his character but it seems to me like it has become detrimental to his state of mind day to day.
Maybe he needs to smoke some weed or DMT by himself and do some introspection ;)
> We’re at a very bad place in American discourse.
Well, the internet connected into a billion+ audience in last 20 years. We didn't have the ability to give a megaphone to every crackpot ~20 years ago. You'd have to physically rally people behind you, literally on the road to get your movement going. Now, Big Tech will gladly serve you that priviledge for a pretty penny off of clicks. And so will the media.
The natural physical filter is no more. It used to sort of self-censor people because they couldn't get a following. Now mainstream media is on the Internet and so are the gullible citizens. Blame the following: Big Tech, Internet Media houses (NYT is constantly full of rage, Fox too), Social Media giants (Twitter, FB, Tiktok, Reddit).
Next wave of understanding will come from in-person social life. It will be the anti-thesis of Metaverse.
It was a weird feeling when the news started to report on popular YouTube videos and later social media posts. More lately social media TRENDS.
The media landscape has become so strange in the past decade.
The more I think about it, advertising and more abstractly, corporatism, are really to blame.
How many of the “video games are violent and bad” or “Marilyn Manson is the devil” people were there really in 90’s early 2000’s? Starbucks hates Christmas people in the late 2000’s/early 2010’s?
Were they just amplified by the media? Is social media and the internet really to blame or did they just exploit a greedy industry already broken by years of mergers and acquisitions by conglomerates who already weren’t keen on spending on journalism?
I guess I incorrectly remember, when the contract was first reported, that any censorship on the part of Spotify would be considered a breach and Rogan could walk away with his show and the $100M payment. Anyone else remember it that way?
I think that was mainly FUD there is no way that they would’ve put that in there at least not in a manner that could be triggered by simply removing an episode.
There might be some material breach clauses there around censorship but it would guess if there are they are worded in a manner that can only be triggered if Spotify directly forces Joe to say something or to bring a specific guest to say something for example.
I am going to call this some kind of technical error. The episodes deleted are so mundane that it's impossible to imagine taking these down but keeping all kinds of horrible music that is explicitly violent, rapey and racist.
Imagine if they removed every song that someone claimed 'demeaned' woman. Hell, just remove every song with the n word, f word, and more. It's actually really surprising Spotify would do this over what.. someone who claimed vaccines were bad? I guess soon all that will be left on Spotify is loves songs and children's songs.
I'm not sure this website is accurate as Rogan so far has not said anything on Twitter or Instagram about this.
Yet if true, this is such BS. It's hard not to see Rogan, with his massive and mostly bipartisan audience, yet still polarizing and controversial discussions, as a litmus test for how well the West really embraces dissent. We're supposed to have invented dissent, right? And Joe Rogan, he's our little free speech canary--and the Western culture is killing him.
But if you don't care about this or don't think it's important, try to remember that bastard time traveling love child of Donne and Orwell: never send to know for whom the censors come.
Sigh. He shouldn't have posted that 9 minutes video "addressing the controversy" and taken such a conciliatory tone. People see those things as weakness or creating a fake-pretext to make it easier to censor him.
From Joe's perspective he probably doesn't care. He's got the exclusive deal, so not going to lose a dime if Spotify cancels him, and even if they does lose money... he probably doesn't really need the money. He's his own platform, his audience is in love with him not with the delivery mechanism.
From society's point of view these kind of binary outrages about censorship, to me, relate to a recent Glenn greenwald tweet where he says that society's going to end up needing two of everything depending on one's ideology: segregated websites, etc. And I think that's probably the point because the outrage about different views is helping to manufacture consent for introduction of a Chinese style censorship system in the West. But it'll be worse than the Chinese system which is guided by some sort of people focused ideology, as it'll be something corporate.
In light of the possible oppressing nature of this the smart thing for individuals to do is not to engage in these ridiculous outrage battles, to avoid inflaming this intolerance of other people's views. Instead of letting yourself be used to manufacture consent for whatever new horror is slumbering towards Bethlehem to be born, set yourself to manufacture your own tolerance toward people with different opinions and not let your strings be pulled by whoever is seeking to inflame these kind of divisions.
I mean we're supposed to be "the permeable", right? (Short Bus).
Is it though? Before spotify deal it was definitely true, but recently I tried some of his new episodes and he's much more conservative leaning nowadays. So much so I couldn't really watch it, stark contrast to earlier episodes with Duncan Trussel, Bill Burr and others. I heavily doubt he has much liberal audience nowadays.
He publicly endorsed Sanders, then moved to Texas [0], accepted a big paycheck and checked out from discussions with a lot of his most liberal friends on podcast. I'm not sure anyone leaning democrat would be happy to move from Cali to a furiously red religious state that goes against some of his beliefs. But then again he has fuck you money so maybe that's the reason.
As someone who is left leaning that moved from NYC -> Florida, I wholeheartedly disagree. Tons of people that dont have fuck you money are leaving California, NY, etc and moving to Texas, Florida etc every day because they dont agree the progressive policies in place. And the 15% in tax savings every year is a nice bonus.
That's funny. Because I think he's a lot more liberal nowadays.
I remember the pre-Spot days where he was with Alex Jones, and talking about Trump and he really seemed a conservative or "new right" type of talking head at that time. Nowadays to me he seems waaaay more liberal, balanced and middle-of-the-road.
The effect could be that sort of thing that dang always talks about on HN where people have the impression that HN is really "anti-China", but in fact that's an artefact of their exposure to the articles that they engage with (being more likely to be those they disagree with)--or something like that, dang explains it way better. Reality is HN is really a thing with multiple facets...but people feel there is "astro-turfing" and stuff like that, when in fact it only seems that way. Better explanations: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
I guess it would also make sense to me if that was the case because, if not for any other reason, it would be a reality of his platform having increased so much. His wider audience demands and benefits from a wider range of guests with a wider range of views. It also makes sense to me that his own view of his purpose has grown from, "somehow orbiting the Trump, new right sphere" to "someone who talks to people from all backgrounds" about the issues of the day.
He isn't conservative leaning. He is pretty much a centre/centre-left anti-authoritarian. Plenty of people watch Joe Rogan that aren't conservatives. Most conservatives and people like myself who roughly describe themselves as anarchists (though I don't like labels as you end up having to defend other people's statements and opinions other than your own) wouldn't consider him right wing at all.
> Plenty of people watch Joe Rogan that aren't conservatives
How do you know that? I'm legitimately interested what kind of audience he has now and how it changed after he signed w/ spotify, but I don't think this info is available publicly, at least I can't find it.
Because he has a sizeable inter-nation audience. If anyone has a sizeable inter-nation audience they will have all sorts of people listening to them.
There is something in the region of 100s of millions of downloads. Joe mentioned it and talked about it briefly on one of his shows.
I've personally spoken to people about Joe Rogan about interviews he has done to people in Belgium, UAE, the US, the UK, Germany. My boss listens to Joe Rogan and he is a Muslim that lives in Sheffield (UK) and I am pretty sure he probably votes Labour or Liberal Democrat.
Some people really need to talk to people outside of their bubble. Joe Rogan has mass appeal because he has long format conversations with interesting/noteworthy or notorious people. It the same reason Loius Theroux was popular back in the 90s and 00s.
> If anyone has a sizeable inter-nation audience they will have all sorts of people listening to them.
Exactly good point. Just like HN. It's an international community. It's funny (but I used to do it) to say that "HN is so conservative", "HN is so anti-free speech" or, "HN is so West coast liberal" when none of those things are true in reality.
You can't make any conclusions on a 100 million podcast based off your personal experience talking to people in your bubble, unless your definition of 'plenty of people' is 0.00001% of audience (I'm estimating the number of people you surveyed at 1000, but do correct me if I'm wrong).
I was expecting such a reply. It is really frustrating talking to people with an attitude such as yours.
He has a large inter-national audience and the number of people that have watched his podcast is in the 10s if not 100s of millions. That is more people than a lot of countries in Europe. Yet you find it hard to believe that the audience can have diverse (in the truest sense of the word)? That is quite frankly moronic.
As for the people I've talked to about it. These are people in aren't in my "bubble". I simply had a passing conversation with them in a break-room or on a Slack call (I work remote now) while waiting for people to filter in or some random people I've spoken to on Discord. These are not close friends, or people I even regularly speak to.
> Yet you find it hard to believe that the audience can have diverse (in the truest sense of the word)?
I find it hard to believe because up to this point you've made zero effort to offer any proof of that apart from 'trust me bro'. I'm skeptical that Joe has a diverse audience because to have that you need to make an effort, and from what podcasts I've listened of his he became noticeably less accepting of other viewpoints over time, on some topics like covid especially. This could easily lead towards radicalization of his audience, but you just dismiss this possibility. He should really follow his old advice and go to woods and do some ayahuasca, his third eye is fully closed at this point.
Unforunately, nobody has to "prove" anything against your skepticism. It's up to you to educate yourself. To claim the reverse is not an argument tactic, it doesn't prove anything, besides the fact that you seem to be lazy and think other people should do your bidding/run errands for you. We're not your research assistants, hah!
It's obvious that Rogan has a diverse audience from looking at the facts.
It's up to you to provide evidence to the contrary or you will have proven yourself to be arguing in bad faith which wastes people's time and harms discourse.
From what I could gather, this whole 'cancel jre' movement is fueled by his covid stance, which many consider contrary to current medical recommendations. Judging from the fact that democrats are more vaccinated [0] I'm making the assumption that they would be more likely to have a problem with his views, meaning his audience is less likely to be mostly bipartisan, reducing the diversity and increasing polarization. What can we call a diverse audience and does Joe have it? Only Joe and spotify know, but my point is it's trending downwards.
The cancel JRE movement has been going on for a long time. He has been attacked for years by the same people. He is competition (and an effective competition) to traditional news and media. They don't like that because he is a self made man and not beholden to them they have nothing to control him with.
His questioning of the official wisdom is just the latest thing they have attacked him on.
> find it hard to believe because up to this point you've made zero effort to offer any proof of that apart from 'trust me bro'.
You and I both have no accurate metrics on his audience demographic. We are not privvy to it. However I can infer from the size and the fact it is inter-nation that the idea that only people that fit inline with the "US Conservative" viewpoint cannot be correct. Which was the original claim I was responding to. I am not asking you to "trust me bro". I am asking you to use some good judgement.
As for Joe Rogan being conservative leaning is that is a nonsense. He is in support of socialised of healthcare, legalisation of cannabis and other viewpoints that many conservatives in the US are deeply opposed to. If you need any evidence of this watch his interview with Steven Crowder. They were at compete loggerheads about it. I was quite shocked at the time as the interview become extremely combative.
> I'm skeptic that Joe has a diverse audience because to have that you need to make an effort, and from what podcasts I've listened of his he became much less accepting of other viewpoints over time, on some topics like covid especially.
What Joe believe and his audience believes maybe different things. You are making the mistake that many people make of assuming that because somebody watches or supports somebody that they fall inline with the views of the host. Nothing could be further from the truth.
What Joe Rogan brings to the table is long form discussions with a guests that are generally aren't combative. The listeners can make up their own minds. This idea that people are too stupid to make up their own minds has is the bigotry of low expectations.
> This could easily lead towards radicalization of his audience, but you just dismiss this possibility. He should really follow his old advice and go to woods and do some ayahuasca, his third eye is fully closed at this point.
The radicalisation accusations comes from older news media which he is in direct competition to. I can dismiss it on those grounds alone. Joe Rogan is only guilty of having conversations that are deemed to be verboten in the current political climate. What is deemed to be verboten and what isn't is subject to political expediency.
> You and I both have no accurate metrics on his audience demographic. We are not privvy to it. However I can infer from the size and the fact it is inter-nation that the idea that only people that fit inline with the "US Conservative" viewpoint cannot be correct. Which was the original claim I was responding to. I am not asking you to "trust me bro". I am asking you to use some good judgement.
My opinion of him attracting more conservative (not just US by the way) audience is based on his antivax stance, which is very popular among them, and he seems to shoehorn this topic quite frequently in his recent episodes.
> As for Joe Rogan being conservative leaning is that is a nonsense. He is in support of socialised of healthcare, legalisation of cannabis and other viewpoints that many conservatives in the US are deeply opposed to. If you need any evidence of this watch his interview with Steven Crowder. They were at compete loggerheads about it. I was quite shocked at the time as the interview become extremely combative.
I didn't watch it before because it's Crowder but you piqued my interest here, I'll have to watch it later.
> The radicalisation accusations comes from older news media which he is in direct competition to.
I'm not taking this argument from older media, I don't read it. I have visited /r/JoeRogan a lot over the years, and the discussions there changed quite a bit. The difference between new and old listeners and the discussions/opinions they have is quite palpable, although not scientifically admissible sadly.
> My opinion of him attracting more conservative (not just US by the way) audience is based on his antivax stance, which is very popular among them, and he seems to shoehorn this topic quite frequently in his recent episodes.
I listen to another newscast frequently and I completely disagree with the host on vaccines (he is anti-vax, I am pro). You are assuming that people won't just skip that part of the podcast. People are willing to listen to people they deeply disagree with if they believe that person isn't being disingenuous.
Just because someone has some view point held by another group holds it doesn't mean that his existing audience is going to abandon them.
> I'm not taking this argument from older media, I don't read it. I have visited /r/JoeRogan a lot over the years, and the discussions there changed quite a bit. The difference between new and old listeners and the discussions/opinions they have is quite palpable, although not scientifically admissible sadly.
This is a complaint of many people that as the fanbase grows that the fanbase is of lower quality. It is a common complaint and you are not the first to complain about it.
That doesn't mean that his audience has become more conservative. It just means you have noticed that there are more conservatives present. Which ironically might indicate that his fanbase is more diverse, not less.
I agree, his fanbase has grown and some of the issues I've mentioned could be attributed to that. I also think that a good chunk of the diverse core audience he used to have left over this issue, but as you mentioned we don't have the data on the scope and implications of both processes.
What do you mean by "diverse core audience"? I literally mean a plurality of people.
Also we don't need hard metrics to accept that podcast has broad appeal. Demanding data for what are obvious things is asinine. If it didn't have broad appeal it simply wouldn't be as popular as it is. I listen to things with much less broad appeal and those things will never become as large because of the very nature of the subjects they are talking about.
Joe became popular for inviting all kinds of guests and just letting them speak, I consider that to be a great boon to forming truly diverse audience, and I have no doubt he had it before spotify days. After that I've seen him almost going for a streak, inviting right-wing guests one after another, but judging from responses I got here this might not be the case anymore, I'll have to listen to his recent podcasts to get a better picture.
> Joe became popular for inviting all kinds of guests and just letting them speak, I consider that to be a great boon to forming truly diverse audience, and I have no doubt he had it before spotify days/
He has been continuing to do that. Before and after the move to spotify.
I looked up exactly when he moved to Spotify. According to Wikipedia it was May 2020. So I spent time (which you could have done before making your erronous claim, because I won't like being wrong) going through the spotify podcast listing.
Just scrolling through the listing since May 2020. I see Mike Tyson, Glenn Greenwald, Oliver Stone, Jon Stewart, Bret Weinstein (who politics is firmly on the left btw despite the claims to the contrary), Bill Burr, Dr Debra Soh. Generally there are a lot of musicians, comedians, body builders, MMA fighters. So there is a fair mix of Right, Left and non-political people on there.
So I don't see how you have a basis for your claim.
> After that I've seen him almost going for a streak, inviting right-wing guests one after another, but judging from responses I got here this might not be the case anymore, I'll have to listen to his recent podcasts to get a better picture.
Right so you are arguing from ignorance? You don't know who he has had on (as I've shown above). I actually looked them up just now just to see if you claim is valid and it clearly isn't.
First, there is no Free speech violation here. A private content company is free to change their content. They can create things and they can delete things. Happens all the time.
Second, to compare de-publishing a few episodes of this sensationalist blow hard from a streaming service to the horrific tragedy that was Kristallnacht, is wildly inappropriate.
Hiding behind a seemingly literal interpretation (I'm not qualified to judge as I'm no expert in the Constitution). But it's awful to not consider the context, or the consequences of that action.
> Second
Wildly inappropriate to try to use your own personal reactions to impose your will upon another to restrict their freedom.
I don't think you really have a problem using Nazi history analogically as criticism.
I think you just don't like that it's criticism directed at something you don't want to see exposed as evil.
Because maybe you like the power that you imagine it brings to silence people who say annoying things, rather than to deal with your own emotions. Perhaps you prefer controlling others to controlling yourself?
Whatever the motivation, supporting the imposition of one's will on others and restricting their freedoms is terrible.
To then abuse the sacred protection afforded by invoking a defense of victims of Nazis, as cover for this behavior, is an abomination.
You made some good points before, even if i generally disagree with you, but this comparison is wildly inappropriate. You get that people were targeted based on their ethnicity/religion, their property and churches were trashed, many were beaten and killed, and tens of thousands were sent to concentration camps, right? Comparing it to this bullshit is an insult to all the victims of Nazi atrocities and you are a terrible human being.
Well not everyone's going to agree with everything I say. And that's the point. You should know that... I thought the French were really into their Liberté, égalité, fraternité. Perhaps in modern French that's an old fashioned notion. But I would have thought that in the wake of Charlie Hebdo people in France's awareness of the preciousness of free speech would have been reawakened. Disappointing if that's not the case.
Oh, so you're just trying to be edgy for the sake of it? Thanks, i was just reading your comments as if there's supposed to be sense in them.
You should know that in France antisemitism, overt public racism, Holocaust denial and the like are crimes. Liberté doesn't stops where it impacts other people.
Oh so you can misinterpret it to avoid dealing with it try to cover that you got nothing to say? No shame to admit you've lost.
The sad thing is, the people who divide us, we're running around doing their battles for them. We shouldn't be on opposite sides of this issue.
> You should know that in France antisemitism, overt public racism, Holocaust denial and the like are crimes. Liberté doesn't stops where it impacts other people
Exactly, we shouldn't be on either side of this issue. They all should be crimes. And you shouldn't abuse that law or the memory of the victims as a bayonet to attack anyone you disagree with.
Oh no. You can call people that, in large groups, exhibit traits similar to Nazis ( blaming all that is not well on some foreign element living among us for instance, nationalism, fair amounts of racism) because they resemble Nazis. That doesn't mean anything and everything also doesm
I'm good with saying that all black people who play basketball or look like they're about to ( like having basket balls and being at a basketball court) are playing or about to play basketball.
Let's be honest. It was always a matter of if - not when - they'd start to cancel Joe Rogan. Arguing about the minutiae of who said what on which podcast is missing the forest for the trees. There was always a reason.
I'm interested in the multi-episode guests that only had some of their episodes removed. One is Kevin Smith, of whom I'm a fan. Does anyone know of any others?
There are other multi-episode guests who had them all banned, like, I think, Dave Asprey, who is a blowhard. I think those who say things that situationally get their content removed are probably pushing the edge in a way I can appreciate.
Queue everyone pretending to be constitutional scholars. Bottom line is that "we" no longer value free speech and as such it will be eliminated. Full stop.
I'm mildly surprised that someone's started this github all the way back last summer, and now it's finally become politically relevant. I guess someone's got an app out there somewhere for everything
I wonder what rights Rogan might have to publish these episodes elsewhere, or to litigate their removal. Presumably he didn't sign a contract saying "you can have all my episodes and can remove as many of them as you want from the internet, with zero consequences".
There's almost definitely some exclusivity clause in the contract they signed, even if we don't know the details. I doubt he can republish them unless they fully break off the partnership
I’m sure there is an exclusivity clause regarding episodes they are distributing. But I would imagine he might have secured the right to have ownership revert to him for any episodes they pull. It’s not like they wouldn’t have considered the possibility that they might want to pull some of his episodes at some point.
Having the rights revert would have the dual benefit of enabling him to distribute such episodes, and disincentivizing spotify from pulling episodes too aggressively.
Exactly. If pulling the episodes is a breach of Rogan's contract with Spotify, then Spotify could be liable. Of course, none of us know what's in that contract.
My opinion isn't even based on all the JRE stuff with Spotify recently, I just don't like Spotify anymore. I use it every day, but only because it's the best I have. The UI changes at least a bit every single quarter, and if I have a weak connection, but my songs are downloaded, I still can't access them. I have to disconnect from any network and then I can access my *downloaded* music. It's slow on my cheap, but recent Android phone, all for an app that plays music. On my old phone, it just stopped working. It was two years old. They finally added lyrics back, but about 4 or 5 years ago, they had lyrics and removed them, saying they'd be back soon, but didn't communicate anything about it. They soon removed the button that said it would be back soon.
So many artists I listen to don't have a legitimate way to purchase their music, so moving to completely owned music is difficult (this would be optimal for me). Even if I was able to make that move, finding new music would be a lot more difficult. I will say that Spotify is 100% responsible for the new music I find, which it does do a good job at.
The problem is that the Spotify alternatives are even worse than Spotify. I really do think it is the best I have, but god damn do I dislike a lot about it.
I recently switched to Jellyfin, self-hosted on a raspberry pi. I already had a pretty large music collection and I'm building more and more out with Bandcamp purchases.
I managed my own library for a decade+ before I got Spotify. I realized, like you, that the app, recommendations, etc. weren't worth it any more this year. So I switched back to managing my own library. It's a bit of work to set everything up, but it's honestly fun to consciously think of my library again. Give it a try -- happy to share details about my own setup if you're on the fence.
The Streisand effect is strong. I've never had the desire to listen to this Joe Rogan guy, but now I do want to get hold of some of these episodes (Russell Peters, the comedian? Dan Savage? maybe a random smattering of the others...)
I hope that the episodes are properly archived somewhere so that in the future when our emotions cool, we can examine this more objectively. Spotify may have the legal right to pull the episodes, but this clash has cultural significance and so we should preserve everything as accurately as possible so its repercussions can be studied.
Maybe the compromise was to remove videos algorithmically, ostensibly to avoid bias from human selection, and this is the poor result? None of the episodes that were removed are particularly controversial: they're comedians and contrarians mostly, and none of the episodes that actually inspired this controversy.
Many episodes with COVID discussion are still up. The ones taken down feature comedians and (non-COVID related) controversial figures. I'm not sure these removals are related to the controversy.
That's what I don't get did Spotify hand Rogan a bucket of cash or is there a contract with clauses that can end the contract. That would seem to be obvious and the point of a contract.
It would be nice to know how much Rogan is costing Spotify versus what he makes for them. At some point there will be a change in which way the cash flows and suddenly the show will be a problem for Spotify.
That is a interesting list. I noticed that there are both liberal and conservative people who were removed from his podcast. I wonder why they did that?
I think this may not be political. They may just want to tighten up the catalog, polish the brand they purchased, and have just the very best material?
No it isn't either. Micheal Malice (who had some episodes where he appeared removed) was unaware of them removing them until someone told him via Twitter. A lot of people aren't going to buy it was a mistake considering the timing.
This is 3 days after Jen Psaki said from the white house podium that disclaimers are a good "first step", but that "we" (the white house) want to see "more done" by tech companies.
Now spotify has complied with the government's wishes. We're now beyond "but it's a private company...", and indeed into censorship.
From what it seems, the "controversial" COVID-related podcasts are intact. It's mostly his conversations with other comedians or political people like Gad Saad, Sargon of Akkad, Milo Yiannopoulos, Gavin McInnes, Alex Jones etc. that have been removed which is a way of punishing Joe Rogan while making it look like it was about completely something else. Removing the COVID related podcasts when everyone is paying attention would be too obvious and Streisand effect could have made those removed episodes even more popular, which is the last thing the pharmaceuticals would want at this time.
I strongly believe he's being punished for the COVID-related podcasts though. These are the ones in question for those who are brave enough to listen to what the mainstream media has been labeling "dangerous disinformation":
Ah, the old appeasement trap. The censormongers who demanded their collection leave Spotify aren't going to come back now that Spotify has caved. And the people who wanted Spotify to have Joe are going to be pissed off and leave. This is a no win scenario now for Spotify. I have never listened to old Joe, but I can tell you I have paid Spotify for the last time. My small contribution doesn't mean anything in the context of their user counts, but if they were going to fold they should have done it immediately so they didn't lose the first half of content.
If Spotify is trying to effect or create the appearance of a willingness to reach a compromise in response to the recent singer pressure campaign, then it is doing nothing other than signal weakness.
Yep, either they remain absolute, or they will bend in the wind at every new demand. Compromising with the modern version of book burners is not going to be a good long term strategy.
Worse, they spent a lot of money and knew what they were getting, so it just makes them look like idiots to investors.
"book burners" seems like a particularly poor analogy, given that the general motivation is to reduce the death toll of Covid-19, not eradicate a cultural heritage (which was, in the case of the Nazis - the quintessential book burners - accompanied by a deliberate mass genocide). A more apt comparison would be people who lobbied to restrict tobacco advertising (see the Surgeon General's Warning, etc.)
I'm sure the motivation of many book burners of the past was also to save the would-be readers from eternal hell. Possible good motivations don't justify censorship.
You could argue that in this particular case censorship probably won't even be effective. Rogan is seen as a something of a censorship martyr by quite a few people now, Streisand effect and all.
Also, there's the fact that most of the removed episodes have nothing to do with Covid-19.
GP said "modern version of book burners". You say it's a poor analogy and "beyond hyperbolic" (below)... and then bring up the Nazis and the Holocaust.
Were all these deleted episodes just about COVID misinformation? All 113 of them? I haven't listened to them but the other comments on this thread seem to indicate that is not the case at all.
I can't speak to Spotify's odd decisions. I don't really care what they did. But the initial "outrage" was targeted specifically at Covid misinformation.
Either way, the book burning analogy is beyond hyperbolic.
The point is simply to ground the conversation in reality, not in this peculiar language of extremes. Will spreading medical disinformation on a popular media platform kill people? Yes, probably. Is skepticism of mainstream medical narrative healthy? Yes, probably. Are those two things in tension with each other? Yes, usually. Should private platforms restrict content that will probably hurt people? Maybe, I don't know. Is this the moral or historical equivalent of book burning? No.
Would you please stop posting unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments to HN? You've been doing it a lot, unfortunately, and we ban that sort of account.
A more apt analogy would be efforts to restrict cigarette advertising. Book burning was about eradicating a cultural heritage, and was accompanied by a literal genocide in the case of Nazi Germany.
Although in this case, the action to remove the proverbial cigarette ads was taken voluntarily by the private media (magazine/etc., in the case of the analogy), and not done as a result of government coersion.
The analogy is really disingenuous at best, and pretty stupid at worst.
Book burnings were hardly exclusive to the Nazis. They just showed us how it can be part of the progress to something much bigger and uglier than ever imagined. And I have to disagree on your cigarette analogy. This is so much bigger than regulation of advertising. This is about using the platforms to enforce censorship of anybody you deem offensive. This is not the same thing at all.
It's actually less severe than restriction on advertising, since it's the voluntary decision of a private media entity, not a government enforced restriction on published content. (Under pressure from another content provider, Neil Young)
It is much smaller than restriction on advertising.
Censorship and book burning are not identical. Regulation and censorship are not identical. Requiring a surgeon general's warning on cigarette advertisements is not censorship, for example. The government preventing a newpaper from from publishing an op-ed in favor of smoking, or consuming large amounts of alcohol while pregnant, etc. would be censorship, true. Would it be as morally reprehensible as the book burnings of history? Probably not. Would it be wrong? Maybe, I don't know.
Please don't do this type of stuff. We are adults capable of having discussions without needing to tug on Dan's skirt especially considering the increasingly heavy handed moderation here. You're actively eroding the culture of maturity here.
>If Spotify is trying to effect or create the appearance of a willingness to reach a compromise in response to the recent singer pressure campaign, then it is doing nothing other than signal weakness.
Perhaps it's just been a long week, but I don't really understand what you mean by "weakness" in this context.
Spotify is in an uncomfortable place right now. Some of the folks who generate some revenue for them aren't very happy with another guy who they bet on to generate even more revenue for them.
This, of course, made worse by the larger discussion around the pandemic.
Spotify is never going to win here. Regardless of what they do they will inevitably alienate a bunch of folks. The question for them is, "what's going to cause the least disruption to the revenue stream?"
I guess I'm not sure how (or why) it makes any difference, no matter what they choose to do.
I think the idea is that if Spotify ignored this and waited for the news cycle and hype to move on, they would retain more of their users (through apathy or whatever.) By rewarding people who have been migrating their accounts anyway, while angering others by capitulating, they lose revenue from both “sides” and make themselves susceptible to repeat scenarios further winnowing users. Hard to say if true, but that is the theory.
Because they still carry a podcaster you disagree with and don't listen to? I don't see people alienated by Comcast because their basic cable subscription has FOX News and MSNBC.
>Because they still carry a podcaster you disagree with and don't listen to? I don't see people alienated by Comcast because their basic cable subscription has FOX News and MSNBC.
Yes. And if they decide to stop carrying that podcaster (with whom I neither agree nor disagree, I have no basis for such a distinction), they will alienate a different set of people.
That was my whole point. They're damned if they do and damned if they don't.
Personally, I have no skin in that game (not as a user, an investor or a content creator), and if I liked popcorn (which is foul, disgusting stuff BTW) I'd be making some about now.
> They're damned if they do and damned if they don't.
I don't see it like that. This is their making.
They weren't damned when they signed Rogan, who was then already both controversial and very popular, and gave him $100m. Nobody forced it, and it was entirely predictable by Spotify that there would be more such controversies down the line. If they didn't want this catch 22, they didn't need to sign that deal.
They should have to provide a justification for why they are removing them. Many of those episodes are with some of my favorite comics such as Bill Burr. Why did they remove them?
I listened to JRE years ago, and those early shows were pretty raunchy at times. When he started getting popular and more "mainstream", I knew those were going to come back to bite him, it was just a matter of time. I'm just surprised it took this long.
Maybe the move to Spotify shielded him for a while, making it harder for people to just run across these episodes by chance.
> #232 Giorgio Tsoukalos Removed on February 4th, 2022
The Ancient Aliens guy? They sure are casting a wide net.
I mean, it's one thing to try to clamp down on medical misinformation during a pandemic, but it's an entirely different thing to clamp on harmless wackiness.
I have a pet theory about what makes Giorgio Tsoukalos and Ancient Aliens so dangererous they needed to be deleted from Rogan/Spotify. Essentially Ancient Aliens is more scientific and intellectually rigorous than anything you read in mainstream news or any of the narratives that drive policy, and it exists as a constant source of embarassment to anyone whose job is to prop those narratives up. It is profoundly subversive.
The people I know who get mad about it get really mad about it, because it is the satire to end all satire. Ancient astronaut theory is a fully consistent ideology and critical theory with at least as much applicability as any critical theory. I could easily write persuasive word for word transcriptions of any of their episodes for any current social issue and it would be as rigorous as the criteria for whatever else people already believe.
When you add a philosophical layer of Pascal's Wager meets Roko's Basilisk - Ancient Aliens may well be the pinnacle of human achievement.
Wow, yeah there's got to be something else that's causing these to be pulled down. Like maybe one of the advertisers in the episode isn't aligned with or allowed by Spotify. Or maybe Joe played a small clip of music that Youtube didn't catch but Spotify did and doesn't have the rights to play. I remember in a lot of those earlier episode Joe would play a lot of videos and random things sometimes with music.
Makes me wonder if the bot comments like this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30220886 was a ploy to strategically silence this story somehow (by using abusing the flame war disincentivizer feature).
Seems like a nice project would be to get every single episode, convert them all to text, and then scan the missing episodes to figure out why it was removed. I can guess for the Milo, Gavin, Alex Jones, and Molyneux episodes. That's a yikes
We don't have anything that even remotely resembles a free market economy on the level of big tech!
We have an economy that functions by virtue of central banks pumping billions into venture capital firms. Venture capital investors in turn speculate on big tech companies that never make any profit. It's a top-down regulated economy full of Ponzi schemes, where a handful of brokers with a virtually unlimited supply of government money make the rules. That is why big tech and big business agenda's are constantly at odds with the popular opinion on the internet and society. They don't care because it is no longer your money they need.
>In another clip, Rogan spoke to a guest who has parents of different skin colors. "Powerful combination, genetic-wise, right?" Rogan said. "You get the body of the black man and then you get the mind of the white man all together in some strange combination... that doesn't, by the way, mean that black people don't have brains. It's a different brain. Don't get me wrong."
Looks like the media found its new Marilyn Manson and Eminem. The CNN slobfest on rogan is sad. Imagine having the resources to cover the most pressing topics affecting humans and focusing on a guy who believes in DMT elves.
I haven't been listening to JR since around (maybe before) he left YT, so know it comes as a surprise that his earlier episodes were also taken to Spotify (and off of YT). Makes sense, I just wasn't aware.
I can see some of the nuts on the list (like Eddie Bravo and, of course, Alex Jones), but seeing Gad Saad came as a surprise. Also, anyone knows what could have been wrong with David Seaman? (I haven't heard his episodes nor anything about him outside of his soccer/goalie career. But curiously he seemed to have been on the show pretty frequently.)
Missed opportunity - now is the time to host the 113 missing episodes on another site so people can hear what is being suppressed. The guy would probably become more popular then ever. Streisand effect!
I can understand why Young and a hndful of other celebrities are upset with Rogan. They have a history with a childhood disease that has influenced their adult lens. Fair enough. We're all human.
Where the understanding breaks down is, why now? Why Rogan? Why Covid? What about all the other ills of the world that need addressing and fixing? For those they're silent? Things more long running and sure to keep running long after Covid and/or Rogan is gone.
As a priority, is Rogan + Covid a top issue? Or is there something more nefarious going on here?
Of course they folded. (And on a Friday night too.) Would you risk billions and cocktail party invites over something as silly as free speech? Daniel Ek is not that dumb.
The removal of Michael Malice episodes upsets me, as he discusses some really important issues. Still, all of the conversations listed are likely gems: comedians like Bill Burr and Tom Segura, Alex Jones in the only context where someone is constantly fact-checking him in real time, and Tim Ferris is a puzzler. I wonder if Joe has any legal recourse here, as according to him he was contractually given full power over the content of the podcast.
I think this will lead to outcome that few people cheering for this are anticipating. Musk, Thiel etc. will back an alternative platform that will host JRE, Lex, Jordan Peterson etc. and in the long term it will win due to being less restrictive. Which in the long term is prob a positive thing.
Rogan was already on less restrictive platforms, which was why those episodes were available to begin with. He chose to go on a potentially more restrictive site, in exchange for an immensely lucrative contract. I'm sure if someone offered Samuel L. Jackson $100 million to host a children's show (yes, I know) he would quite willingly hold his famously coarse tongue.
Also even if your prediction is correct, that's "less" restrictive, and still not completely open. There will always be rules because whoever's paying for the service, whether it be advertisers, subscribers, or billionaires, has a list of things they really don't want to hear.
After living first part of my life in USSR I would prefer a dominant platform to be with minimal restrictions. Large platforms need capital so billionaire or crowdfunding or some crypto project or whatever else eventually this demand for least restrictive platform to exist will be met by some project.
I am not "lumping" Rogan and Lex :) Rogan, Lex and Musk are friends, Lex often talks about desire of creating an alternative platform, Musk actually replied on Twitter at some point that he is thinking of funding an alternative platform. I bet Chamath Palihapitiya and David Sacks would gladly pile on the funding.
This is where "private company" arguments start to fall apart when it comes to free speech because at some point, you need hosting or a network connection.
Yeah, there's a big difference between "We don't want to host your content on our public-facing platform" and "We don't want to sell you digital infrastructure."
I'm all for the right to control how you present to the public, even if you are Twitter.com, but locking groups of people out of commerce just feels sinister.
Political yard signs have an outsized effect on certain demographics too, but should that mean that once you start putting up yard signs you have to put up all yard signs?
In Russia they used to justify their brand of censorship with the argument that "that's what they are doing in the US too"; often these claims are exaggerated and not strictly true, but now you have given them yet another argument for strengthening their Russian brand of authoritarianism. Sad story that there seems to be some kind of convergence between the east and the west; it seems like the shit is flowing both ways :-(
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDjkXjSVWIw "Jen Psaki urges Spotify to take further action on Joe Rogan: ‘More can be done’" the white house press secretary called for more action, well, and she got it.
And guess who, Russian government mouthpeace RT jumped right onto it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqx2BzSfdkI My guess is that they will be using this as a showcase and justification for their own shit at home.
Saw this clip of Joe Rogan criticizing vaccine skeptics near the beginning of the pandemic. He calls people who think vaccines are dangerous “whackos”. Seems he lost his way.
hot take: if people do not like the actions that private corporations take on their platforms to protect their bottom lines. Then send your money to people that are working to build decentralized systems that do not have a corporate owner or answer to shareholders.
And yet no one is complaining about all the misogynistic songs on Spotify and other lyrics. Grown adults have an honest conversation is more dangerous than people singing about raping women and treating them like shit.
It's been one weird fucking ride watching Joe go from an unheard of zero budget podcast about nothing to being a central figure in American politics over the last 10 years. Some times I wish we could just go back.
There are torrents for most episodes in 4 parts ("JRE_001-837", "JRE_838-1094", "JRE_1095-1250", "JRE_1251-1476"). But some episodes are missing, especially pre-YouTube episodes.
I collected all the banned ones in audio form, but many sites don't allow you to create a torrent as a new user, so I gave up.
It would be interesting to see the list of topics / keywords / conjectures in the "missing" episodes so that we know roughly which ones are "off limits".
This reminds me of when Howard Stern left terrestrial for satellite radio because the FCC kept fining him - only to deal with the corporate censors at the new company.
Question: out of those 113, how many of the guests are associated with: the left, the right, pro-vaccines, anti-vaccines, pro- alternative treatments (ivermectin), anti alternative treatments?
I think Joe Rogan is an idiot. But, if anything, Spotify should have just posted a disclaimer somewhere stating these aren’t their views, with some links to reputable sources - even their own “Science Vs” podcast.
It’s not like now the people who believed what he was saying are going to shrug their shoulders and start reading the “New England Journal of Medicine”.
Personally I really hate that idea. Spotify is a for-profit corporation. It's only official view is to make as much money as possible. Any other political or philosophical statement is at best a calculated ploy to make more profit. Let's not pretend otherwise.
Now, if the platform were a publicly funded news organization or TV station, then you could make that argument with a straight face.
If you associate warm and fuzzy feelings with a company, you give them more business -- a very old advertising principle.
Knowing that Spotify doesn't want you to beat up Asians gives the majority of people warm and fuzzies. And I suspect the tiny minority of dudes that want to punch an an old Asian lady are unlikely to do what Spotify tells them to do anyway.
I think it's unfair for you to call him an idiot. Have you seen his video[0] on the "controversy" surrounding him at the moment? I think it will greatly enlighten you as to who the idiot is in this situation.
After discovering why they dropped the episodes, personally I hope that every music artist withdraws their catalog from Spotify and tanks it as a platform if they continue to support him. Supporting a racist asshole should not be tolerated.
When a person takes an ostensibly principled stand to defend the right to post health lies and racist speech on a private service for profit, while remaining silent as government agents ban books and force teachers to tell lies to their students, it is becomes obvious that the principles were always bullshit.
Remember all those times you have seen gaslighting ideologues saying "nobody is actually calling for [canceling/deleting/censorship]", remember how they couch any argument with "private company can do what it wants". I don't care about Joe Rogan in particular, but you're deluding yourself if you think there isn't some relevance here.
A lot of people now suddenly hate Joe, the same way they hate Jordan Peterson, the same way they hated Trump. Every comment will have a preface or disclaimer: "I'm not a fan" in so many words. I did it above.
In a short time that will turn from "I don't support him but..." into something akin to "I see you referenced him, therefore I disregard anything else said"
> In a short time that will turn from "I don't support him but..." into something akin to "I see you referenced him, therefore I disregard anything else said"
Depends on what you mean by 'reference', but if someone treats an awful source like an authority then that's not a terrible response.
This is a private company paying him $100 million dollars to be exclusively on their platform. If he had kept doing his podcast instead of whatever you call what he does now podcast in name only he couldn’t have been banned.
Even if he was removed from the popular podcasts directories, all of the real podcast players allow you to subscribe by entering a URL to an RSS feed. He took the money. He knew what he was getting into.
Exactly. Strip away all of the usual Rogan drama, and this situation is a case study on the strength of podcasting's distributed nature, and the danger that comes with giving that up to cash out.
So, it’s pretty serious. Spotify is paying Joe Rogan to broadcast disinformation that is getting people killed. I think it’s okay in this case if people have a sudden change of opinion or a newly formed strong opinion. He didn’t crack an off color joke.
Twice as many people died in the US last year from Heart Disease than from COVID, but I'm pretty sure we don't (yet) ban youtubers who extol the awesomeness of gluttonous fast food in weekly videos.
At some point, people need to grow up and take responsibility for themselves, and also allow others to do the liberty to do the same. If someone is an adult, in the US, and not vax'd by now, that's on them. Period. Not anyone else.
To put it another way, I owned not one, but two separate copies of "The Anarchists Cookbook" over the years growing up.. the number of governments I have, to date, attempted to overthrow? Zero. Why? Because I was capable of reviewing the offered material and going "yeah, not today prison, not today."
> Twice as many people died in the US last year from Heart Disease than from COVID, but I'm pretty sure we don't (yet) ban youtubers who extol the awesomeness of gluttonous fast food in weekly videos.
That's not a useful comparison because death due to heart disease from gluttony has a quite different probability density function than does death due to COVID. The former is wide but not tall, the latter is narrow but tall. The first is a lot easier to deal with than the second when it comes to health care system capacity limits.
It is on other people though, because unvaccinated people have a higher chance of spreading COVID to others.
We've been over this shit since the beginning of the pandemic, it's surprising and disappointing to see people still framing it as a purely individual decision.
> disappointing to see people still framing it as a purely individual decision.
Unless you live a in cave on the side of the mountain surviving off berries and forgoing all human contact, nothing in life in a purely individual decision.
Dog owners are more likely to have their pet physically hurt a small child than people who choose hamsters.
Owners of Dodge Charger Hellcats emit more CO2 to the environment than Prius owners.
Nobody _needs_ to make six figures a year to survive, they could all perfectly well donate everything above their 'need' to a local soup kitchen... but I don't know anyone who does.
The last I checked, all of these things are still considered perfectly acceptable decisions in polite society. Nobody is out shaming those choices. Except maybe the Prius owners.
I’m genuinely curious what your source is for the claim that the unvaccinated have a higher chance of spreading COVID? According to this UC Davis/UCSF study [0] both vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals carry similar viral loads. The study found that while vaccinated individuals had fewer symptoms on average, both groups had similar viral loads.
“There was no significant difference in viral load between vaccinated and unvaccinated, or between asymptomatic and symptomatic groups.“
Viral load does not have anything to do with chance of spread.
This is actually very easy to look up, if you put in the effort to do it correctly.
I find that HN is really creaking under the weight of "I'm genuinely curious for you to look something up for me, I looked for werewolf shoes and I didn't find anything about this"
This form of walrusing pretends to be diligent interest in factual information, but it's actually sloth, attempt to control others, and a giant "I don't know how to use search engines skillfully" sign around the neck
> this is the first time I’ve been called a walrus.
This is one of your more incredible claims.
> I realize it is difficult to infer tone in a comment but I would encourage you to assume good faith. It keeps this community civilized.
Hey just fyi since you supposedly just learned what a walrus is, one thing they are known for is their requirement that everyone else assumes good faith long past the point of credulity.
Nobody is depriving you here. The trick to not being called a walrus is to not act like one. It's extremely easy!
I’m still not sure what exactly you are inferring by calling me a Walrus. Does it mean I have tusks? Are walruses known for acting in bad faith? Your comments are immature and toxic. If you can’t engage in constructive dialogue, name calling is a poor substitute.
> You really have no idea how much people hate this, do you?
I’m starting to understand how much hate you have in your heart for me. I’m still not sure why. Do you hate anyone who disagrees with you or am I special?
It's not an analogy. It's common internet slang for someone who won't stop arguing even though it's clear that nobody wants to listen to them talk and nobody is taking them seriously.
Nothing of value, filtered through the eyes of someone who has no understanding of the material.
.
> I realize it is difficult to infer tone in a comment but I would encourage you to assume good faith.
This is a core Walrus concept: the idea that anyone who's sick of their inability to read the room just thinks the walrus is acting in bad faith, and that if the walrus appeals harder, the ocean will start to flow in the other direction and they'll suddenly be wanted, liked, and respected.
Predictably, this never actually works, but the reason a walrus is a walrus is that they cannot accept that their constant yammering is inappropriate, so they continue to frame things as "they just don't understand me."
You are overly fake-polite "i'm genuinely curious" because you get this reaction constantly and consistently from multiple people, and won't accept that your own behavior is inappropriate, so you're stuck in a series of decreasingly sensible explanations to avoid the obvious one.
It's simple.
Nobody cares if you're genuinely curious. You're bad at Googling, you give up the second you find something you think means you're right, you stand on evidence you don't understand, you give bare links and expect people to read them (when you obviously did not) and respond at length to tell you why this isn't right when you never even said what in it you're responding to.
I didn't even open your link.
Nobody does.
It should be obvious to absolutely anybody that the person you're trying to force into a conversation *DOES NOT WANT TO TALK TO YOU*.
"Oh well maybe if I'm just polite enough and I google up something where I read the headline"
Stop it, dude. You aren't a casual doctor. You aren't a casual scientist.
Nobody should have to waste their time explaining to you why what random BS you found on Google doesn't say what you thought it did.
I did make the mistake of opening your first link. It had absolutely nothing to do with what you claimed.
I'm tired. Please learn to read the room. Nobody wants to sit here watching you sit in a search engine looking for softballs to throw across the room.
I see that you've tried to turn it into your smurf word for "being controlled," and that since you know you're wrong, you're pre-loading with "in practice"
Why? Because it's not like it in practice either, but "in practice" it's like what you want it to mean, and that's where you'll try to draw the metaphor from
To be censored is to be told that you cannot publish something at all
No, it does not mean "you cannot publish it here." You can still go publish somewhere else? Not censored.
The Food Network doesn't want to publish your physics thesis? You're not censored.
Facebook doesn't want your love letter to Nazis? (oh who are we kidding, of course they do.) But that's not censorship either.
YouTube wants to take down your anti-vax stuff? Still not censored.
UK Government says Starship Troopers cannot be published? Oh. Well that's actual censorship.
This isn't challenging, nobody's learning from your struggle, and you're boring the adults.
So that’s your definition of censorship. However the first result on Google points to a different definition. One more in line with my understanding.
> What is a simple definition of censorship?
> Censorship, the suppression of words, images, or ideas that are "offensive," happens whenever some people succeed in imposing their personal political or moral values on others. Censorship can be carried out by the government as well as private pressure groups.
In short, it doesn’t stop being censorship simply because it is an individual or corporation. Only censorship by the US Government is un-constitutional. So censorship isn’t always illegal. That doesn’t mean it isn’t censorship.
First they spent $100m on a very controversial figure, just to get an exclusive contract.
When he acted controversially they stood up for him, making plenty of people mad and getting others to disassociate themselves from Spotify (Young, Mitchell). Wouldn’t surprise me if they were having some quiet issues with sponsors/ads.
Now they seem to be removing episodes, but reportedly not the controversial ones? This of course goes over poorly with both the pro (why remove them?) and anti (why not the problem ones?) camps.
Hope it was all worth it Spotify. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer company trying to destroy a formerly open ecosystem.
I was absolutely stunned when Spotify did the Joe Rogan deal. You could already tell at that point that he was a divisive kind of person and I just couldn't understand why anyone would want that headache. I was already wondering how YouTube was going to deal with him and even joked to people I knew that the staff at YouTube were probably high fiving each other and planning a big party as soon as they heard the news.
And more than that, like Howard Stern before, some of his popularity comes from that edginess. So it's both the thing people came for, and the thing others are trying to get away from.
Spotify also has very little user stickiness. I switched pretty painlessly to Tidal and now I get better quality audio and the artists get more royalties and I don't have to have JRE and Peterson staring at me every time I login.
Totally agree how painless it is switching services - Tidal paying tunemymusic for music library imports was a good idea.
I wonder if that is part of why Spotify started pushing podcasts so hard - they can get exclusive content easier that way vs going with "commodity" music artists which will be available at all their competitors.
It 100% is. It’s very hard to get an exclusive with any recording artists, let alone enough big ones to meaningfully move the needle. With other good services around Spotify is basically a commodity player in the streaming market.
But exclusive audio content (Podcasts, audio books, etc) is something they can do to keep people from switching. Whether it’s only on Spotify or maybe just comes out a week early and ad free, it’s additional value the other services can’t provide.
Plus Spotify has made all the streaming money they will. They’re not going to grow another 100m users on music alone. But wall street wants more and podcasts driving subscriptions and podcast advertising is a real growth opportunity to make Wallstreet happy.
Of course none of this is good for Frank and Sally podcast listener. But when did that ever matter? The big companies have decided how things will work.
This is my thinking. Unless Spotify builds up a library of exclusive content, they will be destroyed as soon as apple and google stop doing such a shit job at music.
The really weird thing is that the media keeps saying Rogan's "controversial", but almost no one cares. It doesn't show up in polling -- your average person has about 15 things of a higher priority right now.
Almost feels like the point of many articles is to tell people the correct thoughts on a topic, instead of actually finding out and reporting how people feel.
I hope that no-one here was surprised about this given that this multi-million 'exclusive contract' was seen by many as a sell-out to a private platform that has the upper hand on what they allow on their platform.
It seems that those concerned about him selling out now have a point, but I doubt anyone cares - JR still made his money and that decision was ultimately up to him.
But perhaps the big lesson here for others is to run your own company and host your own show.
If anything the lesson here is to blow up harder and faster after you've taken the $100M so you can go back to doing your own thing with your massive and loyal fanbase.
Don't bite the hand that feeds you, tear it off.
How Spotify ever thought this was a good idea still eludes me
Every platform is eventually going to have to deal with this.
The correct move is to be a free speech maximalist (in either political direction) until laws are broken. You can also make rules against directed harassment and threats.
Tell the detractors that "it could just as easily be your side being silenced", because that's the honest truth.
People will complain, but only the fringes will leave.
Free speech has nothing to do with it. Spotify paid him a $100M to provide a product according to their terms. The idea that this is a free speech issue is ridiculous and makes no sense. If it was a matter of access to the content, what you should be arguing for is not having an exclusive contract with Spotify, but use one of the million other services that allows anyone to download the episode.
Free speech is not limited to First Amendment protection of censorship by the state. It can also be inhibited by chilling effects, self-censorship, market power, taboos, etc.
But I think the motivation for "free speech maximalism", from the perspective of a tech platform, is more strategy than principle: if you're in a position to make a decision as to who or what to silence, you are going to be subject to constant pressure from all directions, rightly or wrongly. Sticking to your guns and enforcing a limited and specific scope (illegality, ToS violations) is a "bright line" policy. Holding to it consistently means not having to constantly justify and take heat for tough gray-area decisions, which is a losing game anyway, since you won't be able to appease everyone no matter what you do.
Free speech doesn't always mean an issue with the government. Free speech can be seen as the opposite of censorship.
This is plainly censorship (within Spotify's rights, but still censorship) and while nobody's 1A rights have been violated, it's still affecting someone's ability to publish to their audience.
Spotify already paid him $100M to make his podcast inaccessible to people. Where was the concern then? If Spotify limiting Joe Rogan from post the podcast to other services was not a concern then, why is Spotify limiting what it hosts now a concern? I see no possible philosophical distinction, but if you have potential justifications, please feel free to share.
I think that the fact that's he's been contracted for exclusivity really changes the nature of the free speech argument. Rogan is functionally being hired to Spotify to produce content. I don't expect the ability to freely express myself when representing my employer.
I think it's a very different situation, simply sharing your content on a platform, where I think free speech is much more relevant, vs. being contracted to produce content for a platform, where I think it stands to reason that you're expected to produce what the platform want.
Morals don't make money. Spotify has one responsibility and that's to it's shareholders. Companies that put morals over profits lose to those that don't.
> That ends in a cesspool that nobody is willing to spend money on or do business with.
That's not quite right. Voat was populated by the fringe that was evicted from other more mainstream platforms, Reddit in particular. So the primary demographic of their userbase is "people whose content isn't allowed on Reddit". Which given that Reddit is fairly permissive compared with many places results in an incredibly skewed userbase. Without a compelling reason for users that are more mainstream to switch I think this result is unsurprising.
The "free speech" side of fedi suffers from this dynamic as well. There's a growing contingent that's there simply because they were removed from Twitter.
This is all a great example of why deplatforming doesn't work at all. In seeking to silence various groups they instead get concentrated in specific locations which results in a greater degree of polarization.
It worked fine in the past when the mainstream platforms were also free speech platforms. Scale matters and those websites are only terrible because they're bastions for everybody else who also got banned.
voat is a forum, podcast platforms are passive and do not have any kind of direct social interaction. 'free speech until the law is broken' is what appx the entire internet was like until ~6 years ago.
The fringes will leave. And the advertisers. Because P&G and Fire and Chase Bank do _not_ want to be associated with this kind of stuff.
It’s much easier. You don’t need to be a free speech maximalist _on your platform_. Trying to tie up the whole podcast market under your umbrella is what caused this.
If Rogan was still doing things himself with a standard podcast RSS feed her could still be heard without issue. Spotify listeners could listen without issue. Spotify wouldn’t be getting dragged in the media.
This is 100% Spotify’s fault for trying to control someone controversial and was 100% foreseeable.
> Every platform is eventually going to have to deal with this
I agree. It’s part and parcel of being a platform. You know what’s better than platforms _allowing_ people to say what they want?
What we had before Spotify (etc.) tried to take over: the open world of podcasting.
Ideologically I am a free speech maximalist, but I also personally despise being advertised to nonconsensually.
The issue with unadorned free speech maximalism (aside from people legitimately complaining about idiots spewing lies) is that it also dictates a 100% hands-off approach to even the most egregious spamming, as spam is legal.
As a fellow free speech maximalist, I think it's possible (and fair) to have a distinction between individual opinion and commercial promotion, especially on a commercial platform.
Free speech principles don't preclude some reasonable standards for curation of content. The key is to be consistent, regardless of perspective, and completely transparent. Where private, commercial platforms like FB, Reddit and Twitter have erred is in uneven enforcement of arbitrarily shifting rules which are hardly clear even when disclosed.
They were pretty much doomed to eventual failure once they started responding to subjective and rapidly changing woke sensibilities. Weirdly, I've read thoughtful posts by both Jack Dorsey and Zuckerberg which clearly show they understand they are being backed into a untenable 'no-win' corner yet still find it impossible to avoid.
You realise they have some pretty vile artists on their platform too right? I mean if we're objecting to content here they've literally platformed homophobic and xenophobic music for years. Are we honestly arguing that having conversations critical of big pharma and public health policy is now worse than homophobic hate? The only reason this is being discussed by the media is because this time it's impacting the wrong people.
I disagree. It’s one thing to provide access to a ton of music. Yes there will be some objectionable stuff in there. They can decide to hide it or not. That’s passive.
It’s another thing to actively pay to _create_ such content. That’s the big issue here.
> Now they seem to be removing episodes, but reportedly not the controversial ones?
Yeah I don't get this part. While I could understand why they'd want to remove Alex Jones, there are uncontroversial names like Tim Ferriss who were also removed.
Numerous affected guests have made videos and spoken about it. Only Rogan and Spotify know why.
We get to find out if Rogan actually has principles or if he just talks a good game. I'm hoping he's not a sellout and this situation results in his move to some decentralized platform. 80% of his audience will follow, and the ones he lost to YouTube will come back.
It'd be awesome if he dragged all his podcaster buddies along with him, and the comics and musicians followed.
Uninstalled Spotify, guess no more jre podcast until Joe moves. If he doesn't, I'm not interested in whatever kind of person sells out like that after taking such a powerful stand on censorship.
Joe Rogan is an expert at nothing and this cult of personality around his likeness and its toxic ideas is disgusting. I wouldn't be sad if they deleted them all.
Honest question from a non american. Who is Joe Rogan? And why is he a persona non grata?
And what is his relation to Jordan Peterson? I'm seeing a weird attempt to link the two in the media (presumably as an attempt to use the former to discredit the latter) but I've never even heard of Joe Rogan except in the context of trollposts (which usually do not give the necessary background I need to know what's going on)
The very post you are replying to was in the upper half of the front page when you replied to it five minutes ago. There are 317 comments. What does "cancelled" mean to you?
I fail to see how anyone can seriously listen to Joe Rogan. He has a circus of quacks and conspiracy theorists on the show and when he does occasionally have a legitimate scientist he can barely muster any response beyond “wow that blows my mind”
I used to listen to the "quacks" and the "conspiracy theorists" on Joe Rogan because back in the past most of the conspiracy theorists he had on were pretty harmless... people like Graham Hancock, Jacques Vallee, Stephen Greer. Additionally back in the day he used to have a good balance of scientists and those discussions were interesting esp since he would ask questions from a layman perspective.
I haven't been listening to it in recent months because it seems the show has become has obsessed with covid and is all covid all the time with some comedians thrown in now and then, not to mention Spotify as a platform is kind of a chore to use for podcasts.
"On January 24, 2022 Senator Ron Johnson invited a group of world renowned doctors and medical experts to the U.S. Senate to provide a different perspective on the global pandemic response, the current state of knowledge of early and hospital treatment, vaccine efficacy and safety, what went right, what went wrong, what should be done now, and what needs to be addressed long term. This 38 minute video highlights the 5-hour discussion."
The 38 minute compilation is a great, easily consumable summary - however here's the link to the full 5+ hours of testimony - https://rumble.com/vt62y6-covid-19-a-second-opinion.html - which obviously has far more depth to it.
The reason I ask if you've seen it is Joe's had multiple of these highly credentialed, front-line workers (doctors, researchers, etc. with expert domain knowledge and experience), on his podcast - some multiple times.
It's going to get harder to ignore these people and what they have to say the more formal the setting the information is shared.
Another video everyone should watch is Maddie De Garay's mother giving testimony for 10 minutes of their experience of her daughter being in Pfizer's 12-15 year old vaccine clinical trial. The limitations designed into the clinical trial reporting app might be most obvious to UX designers, but I think everyone will be able to understand the design implications: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2GKPYzL_JQ
Noted Pro-Covid Senator, Ron Johnson. This is all quackery. The description is just an appeal to authority ("highly credentialed") when in reality they are regularly debunked despite their credentials: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/01/24/robert-malo...
And of course you didn't watch any of it, right, just an automated dismissal?
And then you didn't watch the Maddie De Garay video either, otherwise anyone who watches it and cares about integrity would be shocked - and would want to make sure it's looked into - just alone on the clinical trial reporting app design alone is highly disturbing.
Edit to add: You haven't posted in 4 years and you have few comments to begin with? That's a bit curious. I wonder what an analysis of the HN accounts that instantly jump to putting smear campaign links on these different credible, articulate doctors/researchers/experts, would look like. Any way to do such a study dang, ideally with directly or indirectly getting upvote and downvote data to see if there's other interesting patterns that emerge?
Do you expect perfection? This is classic conspiracy stuff. Latch onto some small weird things that are truly odd but probably explainable though maybe with a good deal effort. Or in some cases they are truly just incompetence or whatever. It doesn't imply some crazy vaccine conspiracy that spans the entire world. It just means there is a really complex problem and neither public health policies or vaccine producers are perfect. But how many lives did both of those things save? Probably a lot more than were saved by JR and others casting doubt on these policies and on vaccines.
It's quite telling that your standards are so low, and that you think an app purposefully designed to prevent reporting of adverse events is somehow me expecting "perfectionism."
That component on its own is not a complex problem - it's blindingly obvious.
You're trying to gaslight to categorize something as simple and obvious is a "conspiracy theory" is "classic" attempt to lazily smear and demonize, meanwhile you actually avoid addressing my specific points.
So let's address 1 of my specific points shall we, and not claim that I'm merely being a perfectionist to dismiss discussing it?
Is it a problem, yes or no, that the adverse events that could be reported by participants in at least the Pfizer mRNA clinical trial for 12-15 year olds limited what could be reported by highly specifically creating a relatively short list of relatively minor potential adverse events? Yes or no?
Now, please brainstorm and extrapolate to the potential consequences of the app that participants were provided as the only means of reporting adverse events, and write out your thoughts here.
It's obvious you don't care much for integrity as you dismiss crucial structure for an apparatus meant to and necessary to capture the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth - but interestingly the operators and designers of the clinical trial decided to design the app to not allow any free-form writing option - like you and I are able to do here?
Surely you're smart enough and have enough integrity to agree that that is unacceptable, especially if you believe in the scientific method? Or perhaps you'd be okay if in scientific studies words like "harmful" weren't allowed to be used?
The avoidance and cognitive dissonance you must be experiencing to dismiss this as me being perfectionist is something else.
Did you even watch or analyze everything said in the Maddie De Garay video? I'd go line-by-line through it with you and dive into the implications if you want?
And then what about the 5+ hour long testimony that Senator Ron Johnson had on January ~25th, that included a bunch of highly credentialed frontline doctors and other experts with incredible amounts of domain experience but that have been being smeared and suppressed in the mainstream media? What are your thoughts on these highly intelligent, articulate individuals sharing their experiences and backing it up with third-party study data when necessary? Are they all perfectionists too or they're all lying too?
Here's the 38 minute shorter compilation version EVERYONE should watch even if you're not willing to dive into the studies or domain knowledge they're referencing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jMONZMuS2U (38 mins)
"On January 24, 2022 Senator Ron Johnson invited a group of world renowned doctors and medical experts to the U.S. Senate to provide a different perspective on the global pandemic response, the current state of knowledge of early and hospital treatment, vaccine efficacy and safety, what went right, what went wrong, what should be done now, and what needs to be addressed long term. This 38 minute video highlights the 5-hour discussion."
P.S. Even the U.S. military is represented in these testimonial video: one of the best kept, if not the best kept dataset on a set of humans' health - where you'll hear their lawyer state that prior to the mandated vaccine there was 1.7 million issues reported during the sam period before the vaccines, once vaccines started the issues reported JUST in/by the military was OVER 20 MILLION more than the period before; so are they all lists too, unreliable sources I imagine you'll say, just like VAERS is apparently/conveniently unreliable - which if true then why/how are we even allowing deployment of new treatments if there's no apparatus to detect potential harm? We should just trust clinical trials are designed "good enough" - but not flawlessly like the scientific method would require, because we don't want to be called perfectionist do we!
Fuck ANYONE who tries to demonize or put me dowm or dismisses me when I'm concerned about the safety of children, or anyone for that matter. You should be ashamed of yourself for your current reaction to this - care about the safety of our children, by caring about the integrity and quality of clinical trials, please.
I looked into the case with Maddie, and it seems like there is NO published information on this case substantiating the claims made by her and her mother. Why is that?
--
Kids have gotten sick from the vaccine - but a lot more kids have gotten sick due to Covid.
You obviously feel very strongly about this, but no I don't see any evidence anywhere here that there was any intentional wrongdoing.
> Is it a problem, yes or no, that the adverse events that could be reported by participants in at least the Pfizer mRNA clinical trial for 12-15 year olds limited what could be reported by highly specifically creating a relatively short list of relatively minor potential adverse events? Yes or no?
It is hard to parse some of what you're saying, but what I think you're saying is is it bad that the app only permitted selection of certain things.
First, I don't know this is true. I haven't:
1) Seen the app
2) Seen multiple people talking about the app
3) Seen other apps used for similar trials
From what I know of end-users of software, and also what I know about parents and people who are politically motivated, I have a lot of skepticism about the claims in the video. Note I said skepticism, not that they are lying. I am skeptical.
I don't know if this claim is true.
But, let's assume it is true. There is another list of things I don't know:
1) Were there other ways to report these effects?
2) Is there a clinical reason why the app would be designed this way?
3) What else don't I know that should stop me from jumping to a really big conclusion? (that the entire world is in on some vaccine conspiracy).
Even if the answer is definitively "the app was designed to limit selection of adverse effects of the vaccine during the trial" there is a set of other things that I just don't know:
1) Was the app designed this way intentionally, or was it a consequence of poor planning? Or a bad software team? Again, being familiar with software, I'm skeptical that if we get this far (see all my previous points...) it was intentional
2) What else don't we know that we can't get from a ten minute video?
Your claims are remarkable - they need to be remarkably substantiated, and you're not doing that.
You're being a classic conspiracy theorist, just like I said in my first comment.
Because he's a compassionate and free thinking interviewer who approaches a conversation like a real human being. With respect for the individual whether the person has controversial opinions or not, which seems to be something lost in media these days with the constant need to be 'right'.
His interviews aren't template question a, template question b, it comes across like a natural conversation, an opportunity to talk to experts in a plethora of different topics and gain an insight to the distilled wisdom of individuals who have spent their life researching their respective fields.
There are "conspiracy theorists" because there are conspiracies which are uncovered every now and then. Why would there not be when a lot of money and power is involved?
A lot of inequality comes not from some people being inherently superior/inferior or deserving/undeserving but from information management, a crucial part of this is to secure it from competing actors while sharing it with those with overlapping interests. That is the definition of a conspiracy.
Even if there were actually no known conspiracies, we can't know they don't exist unless something comes out... so it would be healthy to have some conspiracy theories around and events being tested against those theories. The mere motivation to suppress them is very likely to come from either ignorance or malice. I believe the very fact that "conspiracy theories" are treated with such hostility is a tell that there are much bigger conspiracies that we need to uncover.
Exactly why I listen to him. What makes you think we all want to only listen to mainstream opinions filtered by media "experts" and journalists? Also I'm absolutely fascinated by some of the fringe people and their ideas, particularly Graham Hancock, Randall Carlson, Robert Schoch, i.e. the ancient civilization stuff. Literally nobody else in the media discusses these things with so much earnestness as Joe Rogan.
Always fascinating to me that being interested in fringe science and history always seems to mean listening to people who have no idea what they’re talking about instead of finding the actual fringes and edges of legitimate research and understanding. Probably because the quacks are easier to understand and simply more fun, since they’re aiming to be entertaining rather than accurate. And accuracy is, frankly, boring.
Anyway, going back to reading my book about how aliens told Bill Gates how to invent computers in 1992, leading him to found Apple and help the Allies win World War 2. It’s the story the mainstream media doesn’t want you to hear.
Yes that’s all fine and dandy, but Obama did make a statement about the UAPs recently, which was remarkable in its own right. Surely claims of quackery are true 99.9% of the time but it’s that .1% that’s the kicker.
Obama said there are things in the sky we can't fully explain, to which: "no shit." He kind of jazzed it up because he was on The Late Show. So if you're claiming that Obama said aliens are visiting Earth and this validates the claims of Billy Bob Quackdoofus, well, he didn't do that. And it doesn't validate the quacks. And if it did, then why listen to the quacks at all if you have to point to someone like Obama, anyway, to prove their accuracy?
I made no such claims of validating any quacks or quackery, as a careful reader would recognize. What is your agenda in misrepresenting what I wrote?
To clarify the point; the fact that a former president commented on the UAPs at all was remarkable. To expand, even the existence and decades long cover up Area 51 and the proven things that have come from those programs (like the f-117) are examples of the .1% of “conspiracy” quackery that did happen to be true.
I maintain these types of things are the gateway or hook that draw people deeper into conspiracies, but I’m no expert.
Both Clinton and Trump have discussed UFOs in recent memory, so not that remarkable. But, anyway, I guess I prefer listening to people with a greater than 0.1% accuracy rate.
> Graham Bruce Hancock… promotes pseudoscientific theories… An example of pseudohistory and pseudoarchaeology, his work has neither been peer reviewed nor published in academic journals.
> Mark Lehner, an American archaeologist and egyptologist, has disputed Schoch's analysis, stating, "You don't overthrow Egyptian history based on one phenomenon like a weathering profile... that is how pseudoscience is done, not real science."
> Historian Ronald H. Fritze has described Schoch as a "pseudohistorical and pseudoscientific writer".
Randall Carlson doesn’t have a wiki page.
I hope anyone who is interested in these people is listening to them out of morbid curiosity and not because they think they are deserving of any credence whatsoever. The scientific method is not optional. If you don’t use it, you’re not a scientist.
Rogan, however, appears to genuinely want to believe (and promote) these theories, whether they have any factual basis or not.
Notice how I never mentioned "science" or "scientist" in my post, because I knew exactly the type of retort I would get - "Look at what Wikipedia says about these guys!". Do I believe everything Graham Hancock peddles? Absolutely not. Some of his ideas are just plain ridiculous. But do I believe that civilization first started with Mesopotamia? Again, absolutely not. There are tons of actual solid evidence out there that we go way back.
And my God, everything isn't about science or the scientific method. Some of this stuff is just plain entertaining to me. Is it really so wrong to listen to these things and just have a great time thinking about crazy and out there stuff?
This is the best explanation I've heard of the show's appeal: Back when I was a kid you didn’t need Joe Rogan. Your best friend had a 27 year-old brother who was a fucking loser who would smoke pot in a room with blacklight posters and tell you that the Mayans invented cell phones.
Joe Rogan facilitates discussion with interesting people and not much more. Mainstream news has done just about as poorly as it could have reporting facts, unknowns, and probabilities with Covid...as the anointed truthsayers, they most definitely created a vacuum by dismissing credible questions and skepticism (lab leak, mask effectiveness, how to think about vaccines long term). And they have been eager to bless the opinions of those who have been far too optimistic https://youtu.be/_FvWnlIEHVo
There is no way we just deplatform or content moderate our way out of honestly misguided information like Malone and McCullough. Misinformation and disinformation cannot include people who are trying in good faith to present a pov that happens to just be just wrong…at some point in time that would include…everyone.
> they most definitely created a vacuum by dismissing credible questions and skepticism
What I hate about “skeptics” these days is that they think an opinion is a valid scientific argument. I mean, just go work with the published data and prove it isn’t valid. Instead, we have guys who go around saying things like “Covid is not a virus, it’s our own EXOSOMES duh”. And clueless idiots who amplify those.
Ben Shapiro is a funny guy sometimes, but his recent episode on JRE was disgusting. “We don’t need any measures because I got sick and I was fine!”. That ignores all of the scientific and clinical evidence on the population scale.
What happened to the idea that you should make up your own mind? And if you’re not allowed to do that, who vets the information? And who vets the vetters?
Look at the list of deleted episodes. The majority of the shows are with far right, hateful people who should never be platformed. It's not even quacks, it's pure hate.
> I fail to see how anyone can seriously listen to Joe Rogan
I can't speak for others, but I'm there for the guests. Not all of them, but I find Joe to be an entertaining host, mostly because it's just different. The ones I enjoy the most are the ones where it feels like some random dude has recognised he's on a train with a leading world expert in a field he finds interesting but knows nothing about. It's just earnest conversation from someone curious.
> when he does occasionally have a legitimate scientist he can barely muster any response beyond “wow that blows my mind”
I love watching Joe explore complex subject matter with experts. There are so few interesting interviews with scientists just talking about why they do what they do and what it is that they find fascinating and why they love their craft. There are some real good interviews where they just geek out and Joe asks them really stoned questions. It's not for everyone, I guess.
More to the point, as long as people hold elitist opinions like this, then there will be people who distrust science (and people abusing that to make money)
Isn't that his appeal though? He lets the guests speak without much interjection beyond "wow" and "really". Unlike many other media hosts, he doesn't have his thumb on the scale trying to steer conversations towards his own political leanings.
And while he's featured a few conspiracy theorists, they're a minority and are balanced out by credentialed 'serious' scientists.
That's all beside the point though - purging conversations from the internet is bad, and the culture that cheers this on is worse.
Fair points, but holistically one could argue he causes more misinformation and controversy than he contributes to scientific progress and education.
Regarding censorship, where does one draw the line? Misinformation? A conversation encouraging self-harm? The harm of others? Without holding media to some reasonable standard an anything goes mentality develops.
"I fail to see how anyone can seriously listen to Joe Rogan".
Maybe you should start there. It pays to learn to empathise with and try to understand other people. You don't have to like someone else, but its not that hard to see why people do listen to his podcast. You don't have to be that dismissive of other people.
Google is a big problem here. Joe Rogan is like the Reddit for all our broken Google searches. So Joe Rogan + random topic = high probability of genuine, good and arguably reliable content. Everything else is blogspam and regurgitated content from "hit like and subscribe" bros.
It was a common refrain from people who were afraid to admit they read playboy to people in public that they just "read it for the articles" because they had surprisingly in-depth articles, interviews, etc. It's also why that persons analogy falls flat since no one is afraid to admit they listen to Joe Rogan.
Cool, so are you for or against censorship? And I don't know about you but I like listening to people I disagree with. I don't like living in an echo chamber and don't want to send "conspiracy theorists" to a different echo chamber.
Indeed. As I saw someone say a while back Joe Rogan is Gwenyth Paltrow for men and that is spot on.
The biggest problem, for me, with Rogan’s podcast is he brings on people that know nothing about a subject but let’s them talk as if they are some kind of expert. They have long conversations where Rogan as little if anything of value and just let’s a lot of weirdos that will get views ramble on endlessly for 2 hours. Then things get cut and paste around social media and misinformation spreads like wild fire.
A recent example is Dr Jordan Peterson talking about climate change. He lacks even a basic understanding but was sitting there talking about it with the confidence of a climate expert and as he is a Doctor people take him seriously about everything and it’s just god damn awful.
The same problem exists on a lot of “news” shows/channels where they have a genuine expert that has studied a subject for 20+ years and is known and respected world wide and sit them next to someone that read something on Facebook then got very vocal about it as it matched their feelings on the subject.
This whole “we need two sides” concept is bullshit when the two sides are not equals but are presented and treated as equals.
It gives credibility to people that deserve none as they have done nothing to earn it.
I think multiple points of view are extremely important but you need to ensure the people involved are as close to equal as possible with regards to their professional standing and experience. Not some random blogger.
The idea that we have to silence these people because they are spreading incorrect information implies that no one has any personal responsibility to educate themselves.
Personally, I thought that it was hilarious that Peterson criticized climate scientists for building models without the full information, because that is exactly what his field of clinical psychologists do.
Your argument is that because some people choose to get their information about the vax and climate change from people that are not experts in those fields none of us should have access to that media.
If that is how you feel you should also be in favor of shutting down fast food restaurants and liquor stores because some people don't take responsibility in those areas and become obese and alcoholics.
I don't think the argument is that Rogan or such guests shouldn't have any way to express themselves. Rather that carelessly platforming any contrarían in a lazy attempt at balance is harmful.
These people are more than welcome to setup a blog and write up their views should they wish but there is an astronomical difference between them posting their views on whatever subject they wish and inviting them onto a podcast listened to by tens of millions as if they are some sort of respected expert in the subject.
Also as I said in my original post this is not just aimed at Rogan's podcast but the media in general. Many times I have seen experts in a subject with decades of experience sat next to a random person from MumsNet or some other online community with anecdotes and nothing more. Yet they are sat side by side, given similar air time to communicate their views as if they are in some way 'equals' on the subject which is misrepresentation.
In no way am I saying the non-expert random person should be silenced but they also should not be given such a wide reaching platform due to laziness of the "news" service to find an actual expert to argue the other side.
They deserve free speech, but only if 50k people read it, not if 100M watch a video about it? How do you tell the 99M that they don't deserve to watch this media?
Spotify doesn't have to bankroll grifters. If 99M people want something bad enough they'll find a way to get it. In fact before the Spotify exclusive Rogan could be found and listened to via any podcatcher or index.
I never said we have to silence them. I don't think we have to give them a megaphone to hundreds of millions of people unchecked either though. Why should we give a platform to any random person? Do we no longer care about a persons expertise on the subject?
> Your argument is that because some people choose to get their information about the vax and climate change from people that are not experts in those fields none of us should have access to that media.
Again not what I said and you know it.
> If that is how you feel you should also be in favor of shutting down fast food restaurants and liquor stores because some people don't take responsibility in those areas and become obese and alcoholics.
No, I would be in favour of better educating people. You know by having them get information from actual experts with regards to their bodily health to either lose weight/never become obese in the first place, show how to enjoy alcohol without it becoming an addiction, etc.
>Why should we give a platform to any random person? Do we no longer care about a persons expertise on the subject?
In 2002 all of the media and the experts said that Saddam Hussain had WMDs and ties to Al-Qaeda and we went to war and hundreds of thousands of innocent people died.
I'm not saying that experts don't exist, I would much rather have the chief surgeon at Harvard perform surgery on me than some random guy off the street. But, the idea that "non-experts" shouldn't be able to you cannot question climate scientists on a large platform gets your right back to the Iraq war situation.
Honestly, I wish people took climate change more seriously, and I wish that people didn't become alcoholics and obese, but that is a tradeoff that exists in a free country.
>But, the idea that "non-experts" shouldn't be able to you cannot question climate scientists on a large platform gets your right back to the Iraq war situation.
I'm not saying you cannot question climate scientists though. I'm not saying you cannot question any expert.
The difference, and my complaint, is that this isn't just questioning experts but taking an expert and a non-expert and treating them as if they are equal experts in the subject. People listen to these non-experts in a subject (because they are an expert in some other subject) and accept what they are saying as correct.
If you want to discuss clinical psychology then by all means have Jordon Peterson on, after all he is a clinical psychologist.
But don't ask a clinical psychologist about quantum computing or climate change or any other subject they're not an expert on and present what they say as if they're an expert.
Imagine inviting a race horse breeder on a show to discuss horse racing and then the conversation pivots to Formula 1 engines and race car physics and you treat what they say as expert advice because well horse racing and Formula 1 are both racing sports aren't they. Surely this persons knowledge of breeding a horse transfers over right? That's about the same level of "transfer" that Jordon Peterson's clinical psychologist background has to climate change science.
As for Iraq and WMD that is a far more complicated discussion and the comment section of Hacker News is not the place for it.
This is the difference, I actually would like to hear a expert horse racer's thoughts on F1 racing. I'm not saying that a house racer is better at F1 racing than an experienced F1 racer, but it would be interesting to get their perspective.
Jordan Peterson clearly doesn't understand climate change in detail, I understand that, and I can watch him talk without thinking that climate change is a hoax.
That isn't what I said. I specifically said "Formula 1 engines and race car physics". I put it this way because I mean the specifics of Formula 1 engines and car physics. Not a general chat about Formula 1 but specific specialist areas.
Sure if it was just a general "oh what do you think of F1?" and they shared their personal opinion then fine but if they start saying stuff like "All the F1 engineers in the whole world don't know what they're doing" nobody is going to take them seriously (or you would hope not).
It is this important point, general opinion vs specific area expertise, that is the big issue for me.
Following the Dr Peterson example, had he said something like "oof I think climate change is all overblown and stupid and I don't agree with any of it" then that is his opinion and of course he is entitled to voice his own opinion.
But he didn't say that, he went in to attack specifics about climate models that he patently has no expertise in but talks as if he does. He presented it as if he is sharing factual information and that "nobody" working in climate science is correct.
All climate projections are models without full information over a long period of time. He is correct about that. The issue is that he isn't proving the opposite, he doesn't have any proof that increased CO2 levels will cause minimal problems over the long run.
> A recent example is Dr Jordan Peterson talking about climate change. He lacks even a basic understanding but was sitting there talking about it with the confidence of a climate expert and as he is a Doctor people take him seriously about everything and it’s just god damn awful.
Ironically, I see this on HN, too. Not always, but frequently enough.
What I'm talking about is comment sections (often about economics, climate change, etc.) with commenters who post with iron-clad confidence, only to be contradicted by other commenters who take the opposite position with the same confidence.
I read these dueling comments and think, "Everyone seems so sure of themselves. But I have no clue as to who is correct here."
I find this jarring because: a) somebody has to be wrong in these wars of dueling facts and b) I'm surprised because I feel that HN is enriched with reasonably bright people who I'd expect would be more circumspect with their comments.
I'm not surprised about the abject confusion that the general public has when discussing similar topics, especially since I am often confused reading HN comments. I know that's arrogant of me, but there's truth in there, too.
tldr: If I can't get a handle on dueling "facts" when reading HN, how the hell can I expect Joe Rogan or his listeners to do the same?
> I'm surprised because I feel that HN is enriched with reasonably bright people
The biggest misconception is that an expert in some field(especially STEM) has “common sense” in other areas. My former classmate is doing a PhD in automation, but claimed vaccines are harmful and he’d rather get sick “naturally”. The same goes for politics, economics, and other fields. It’s like people can’t imagine they might be completely ignorant in the areas outside their field of work.
Citing sources would be a nice plus, but I think it still suffers from the issue that primary research always has caveats and limitations. And you need a certain amount of domain knowledge to know how strong the conclusions are.
I've come to believe that "critical thinking" is often a matter of knowing which expert to trust. And sometimes, knowing who to trust is difficult.
I wouldn't say so. Original sources can be in disagreement with each other, and can be wrong. Without much effort, you can generally find some scholarly article to use as ammunition for whatever argument you want to make, and then find another one to make the opposite case. And of course, increasingly, such articles don't hold up to much scrutiny anyway.
This is idiotic. I really respected Spotify for their position in the face of 'controversy.' I'm not a JRE listener, but believe in free speech.
What Spotify is doing now just pisses off both sides. Pro speech people don't like this, JRE listeners don't like this, and anti Rogan people won't stop until he's 'canceled' completely.
Fortunately Rogan is still as free as ever to publish these episodes in any other venue, but Spotify (like any publisher) reserves the right to host (or not) whatever content it wants. This isn't an infringement on anyone's speech, so hopefully "pro-speech" people (interesting false dichotomy you've struck between this group and "anti-Rogan" people) are just as happy as they were yesterday.
EDIT: A lot of reflexive comments here very quickly assuming this is about removing Rogan's COVID-sensitive content, but looking at the list of removed episodes and how many guests are the subjects of serious sexual allegations, people might want to consider who they're actually defending here.
It's hilarious to me how every time this "free speech" "discussion" comes up, it inevitably leads to "people not wanting to associate with me or listen to me speak is denying my free speech".
The primary issue is being uncomfortable with other people making free associations (Rogan and his audience). One's product being carried in the same store as someone else's product is a tenuous "association" at best.
Don't get me wrong, freedom cuts both ways; some hindrances to free speech are perfectly legal, and would ironically be violations of the First Amendment to prevent! But let's not pretend that these kinds of boycotts are simple discomfort or preference: they're an attempt to change what is permissible to say, because "won't somebody think of the children?"
I don't understand why that's a problem to some people. Isn't the whole point of the "free market" that I'm allowed to cancel my subscription if I disagree with whatever Spotify is doing?
From my perspective it is a very obvious double standard when people consider not wanting Spotify to air anti-trans rhetoric an attack on free speech, but calling the acceptance of trans people a sign of societal collapse is not a problem at all.
Is it not a form of censorship when someone tries every tactic in the book to discredit a group of people to an audience of millions?
> calling the acceptance of trans people a sign of societal collapse
> tries every tactic in the book to discredit a group of people
At the risk of taking the bait: this is clear evidence you've never listened to the show. If you want to take issue with his specific opinions on trans women in fighting sports, or specific choices of guests, fair enough; but the "guilt by association" and "indictment by meme" is exactly why we all benefit from free and open discourse, including being tolerant and charitable to opposing views. Witness the "cancellations" of trans-ally voices like ContraPoints or Lindsay Ellis (the latter of whom was so traumatized that she quit YouTube permanently).
If you want to draw a line somewhere, and withdraw your participation by boycott, or even ostracize other participants, that's your right; but don't pretend you're not attempting to influence societal discourse, and prevent third-party conversations and associations.
You are free to associate/disassociate with whoever you want. When you pressure other entities to associate/dissociate with someone according to your preferences, that's a free speech issue.
People keep saying this but Neil Young and the others never pressured Spotify to do anything about Rogan or anything else. His statement was very clear, he didn't want the association and wanted his music removed.
If he had just quietly pulled his music, I would agree. But since he made a public show about it, its clear the purpose is to exert pressure on Spotify and/or to encourage others to also pull their music to force Spotify to change their policy on Rogan.
Making a public show to exert pressure is an act of free speech. Just because someone doesn't agree with the intent or consequences doesn't make it not a speech act.
The issue isn't whether Neil Young's speech act was in accordance with free speech--it was. The issue is whether his speech act was indented to curtail the speech of another--it was. These claims are not in contradiction.
This logic very quickly crumbles when you are confronted with the fact that Joe Rogan saying trans people are the downfall of "western society" is also intended to curtail the speech of another.
It's almost as if free speech absolutism alone isn't a complete and consistent framework. Deciding that speech acts which call for the curtailment free speech are permissible makes the system inconsistent. And deciding that those speech acts lies outside of the system in which they are constructed makes the system incomplete.
> When you pressure other entities to associate/dissociate with someone according to your preferences, that's a free speech issue.
That's not a 'free speech issue,' that's free speech in action. Until the government is punishing someone for their speech, everyone has and is using free speech.
If you want to see actual free speech issues, look at the anti-BDS laws[1].
Free speech isn't limited to legal matters. It is an ideal. If you pressure someone not to associate with others then you are intentionally taking action with the intent to suppress speech. That is anti free speech. There is simply no way around that.
The US affords protections against the government infringing your speech, but not (generally) against private parties doing so.
To put it bluntly, cancel culture is anti free speech by definition.
> To put it bluntly, cancel culture is anti free speech by definition.
Trying to duck consequences by crying 'cancel culture' is itself an attempt to stifle speech. When consumers protest a business, they're using speech, not 'pressure,' because in that context 'pressure' isn't a real thing. There's government action against a business, and there's plain old real world consequences.
>When consumers protest a business, they're using speech, not 'pressure,' because in that context 'pressure' isn't a real thing.
This isn't true in the age of social media. A relatively small protest (i.e. not large enough to register on their financials) can create a disproportionate amount of bad press which can exert pressure on a company to act. Manipulating social media algorithms to surface your grievance to the top of the trending list is a kind of pressure.
> A relatively small protest (i.e. not large enough to register on their financials) can create a disproportionate amount of bad press which can exert pressure on a company to act.
I don't see how this different from a 'relatively small protest' in front of a company HQ getting into the traditional press. If your protest is enough to activate the 'hot' algorithm, so be it. That's not manipulating social media, that's just how social media works. Trying to stifle that kind of protest is the same kind of 'censorship' that's being complained about here.
Furthermore, if it's enough to cause a company to act, it's 100% because it's large enough to register on their financials in some form.
>I don't see how this different from a 'relatively small protest' in front of a company HQ getting into the traditional press.
Social media makes it different. Social media turns intensity of belief into the appearance of large numbers. Networks of like-minded individuals are mobilized to present a consistent message to some entity. This gives the appearance of high motivation and a large representative sample, when in reality it is neither. Social media protests incur zero cost to participate and are non-representative. The engagement algorithms and the built-in network dynamics eliminates traditional barriers to protesting and do much of the work of creating these frequent uproars.
I used the term manipulation because the dynamic brought out through social media is fundamentally dependent on social media.
>Furthermore, if it's enough to cause a company to act, it's 100% because it's large enough to register on their financials in some form.
Being fearful of financial backlash doesn't entail that the actual real-world backlash would be significant. The fact that social media eliminates the cost to participate in these "protests" suggests that when participation has actual costs it will be greatly reduced.
>When you pressure other entities to associate/dissociate with someone according to your preferences, that's a free speech issue.
That's free speech. As long as no one is being coerced through violence, attempting to influence someone's opinion and convince them to associate or disassociate with someone is clearly free speech. Hell, it describes most political speech and a lot of journalism.
> > When you pressure other entities to associate/dissociate with someone according to your preferences, that's a free speech issue.
> That's free speech.
Yes, speaking to someone in an attempt to pressure them not to speak to someone else is indeed a form of speech. However, the things you are expressing (ie attempting to pressure them) is an active attempt to curtail someone else's speech. So you are using your speech in an attempt to curtail someone else's speech.
> As long as no one is being coerced through violence, attempting to influence someone's opinion and convince them to associate or disassociate with someone is clearly free speech.
No one claimed otherwise. It is clearly legal to do so. It is also clearly an anti free speech sort of thing to do.
>Yes, speaking to someone in an attempt to pressure them not to speak to someone else is indeed a form of speech.
No, it isn't merely a form of speech. It's free speech. It's just as free as any other kind of speech. Free speech allows for conflict with speech, and it doesn't guarantee all speech all possible platforms.
You don't get to decide that only the speech you agree with gets to be free, but speech that disagrees with that doesn't.
As a free speech absolutist, I will never stop someone from saying that free speech should be curtailed. To do so would be antithetical the the principle of free speech.
So if I insult and berate you at a party, and you choose to go home after seeing that the host won't intervene, you're the one who's against free speech?
Insulting and berating has a somewhat threatening connotation to me and so I think isn't even a remotely accurate analogy.
Say Bob and Sue are at the party talking about some topic you don't approve of. They aren't talking to you, just each other. You request that the host remove them. The host refuses. So you attempt to get other people to very vocally leave the place in order to pressure the host to kick Bob and Sue out.
> So you attempt to get other people to very vocally leave the place
So...exercising your free speech to convince other people to exercise their free speech? Sounds like lots of free speech to me.
It's up to the host whose presence they value more. They can always decide you're an irritating busybody and no one wants your negativity killing the vibe.
Free speech is about GOVERNMENT interference. You seem to have that confused with the free market, or perhaps just confused by social consequences of anti-social behavior.
You're confusing free speech with the first amendment. When Voltaire wrote about freedom of speech he wasn't referring to the US government. It's a universal principle.
>Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
I think it is reasonable to assume that when the vast majority of Americans refer to "free speech" they are making reference to the Bill of Rights and the First amendment. Unfortunately, most people don't seem to understand that, with regards to speech, the 1st amendment is only about preventing government from curtailing speech. It doesn't say any private individual or company has to allow all speech.
I don't think anyone claimed that a government protection was being violated. It's you that saw "free speech" and apparently assumed that meant the first amendment and the US government.
There are ways in which I can legally attempt to suppress the speech of others, for example I could threaten to evict guests from my home if they bring up certain topics. That is clearly an action which goes against the principles of freedom of speech but it is not a violation of any of the protections provided by the US government.
Whether such an action on my part is morally justified will be highly context dependent. For example, perhaps I don't want certain topics discussed in front of my children in my own home?
Suppressing Joe Rogan is an organization expressing their free speech rights. Or perhaps you think organizations don’t have the right to control what is on their platform?
Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
"Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."
Imagine you have gym membership. The Gym is OK but the equipment isn't always maintained and the staff are underpaid. One day you come in and dead centre is a brand new expensive and loud fart machine. You decide this is too much and join a different gym. How is this "silencing" Joe Rogan?
Those people are choosing to disassociate with a platform because they believe it is choosing to host harmful misinformation. Agree or disagree with that opinion, you suggesting it is wrong to do that in the name of free speech seems hypocritical.
People aren't mad Spotify is hosting Rogan; they're mad that Spotify gave him 100m to be the exclusive distributor of his crap.
I don't get why people keep trying to turn this into a free speech issue. It's not. I stopped giving Spotify money because they're going to turn around and use it to fund thinga I disagree with. So I guess people are just arguing against capitalism?
You're right, unfortunately I fell prey to the same knee-jerk instinct that I'm calling out! It would've been more accurate for me to say he's free to publish these views in any other avenue, if not the episodes.
Is he though? I suspect Spotify owns the rights to those episodes and to his show, so I doubt he is free to publish these views in another avenue. Spotify wouldn't pay $100M and not contractually lock up all of those rights.
It's meaningless to speculate but I doubt Spotify can stop Joe Rogan from repeating any of the assertions made in his podcasts on, say, Twitter, or at live events, or in a bar. In terms of whether this is an issue of freedom of speech, the point is he has the same rights as he had yesterday.
Yes it was exclusive, but I wonder if the exclusivity applies for episodes Spotify decides not to host/publish. I would imagine there has to be a usage clause in the exclusivity deal which reverts rights back to Rogan if Spotify doesn't publish the JRE in part or whole.
Heidegger was a member of the Nazi party; Simone be Beauvoir was banned from teaching for molesting her students [1]; and Foucault may have molested children [2], and certainly he advocated for the right to have sex with minors [3]. The publisher's of these philosophers are private companies so why don't we wage a twitter campaign against them until they stop publishing these racists and sexual predators.
Your free speech rights stop where my property rights start.
Or alternatively: whose speech is more important? Rogans or Spotify's?
If companies can select who they will publish to please people they can also 'cancel' them to please people, or do artists somehow have tenure once they become controversial and divisive?
I’m “pro speech” and I love this! No governmental agency stepped in and told Spotify what to do. They have a contract with Joe Rogan, are ostensibly honoring it, and are making a decision on what speech they want to be associated with.
What else do you want them to do? Be forced by someone to make a decision they don’t want to make? That doesn’t sound like something someone who believes in free speech would want.
Then I don't think you're as pro speech as you seem to think you are. You clearly appear to be in favor of protections against the government curtailing your speech. However you do not appear to value the principle of free speech very highly or you would be against both people attempting to pressure Spotify and also Spotify picking and choosing content.
Yes, they clearly have a legal and moral right to do so. However, exercising that right clearly runs counter to the principles of free speech.
> However you do not appear to value the principle of free speech very highly or you would be against both people attempting to pressure Spotify and also Spotify picking and choosing content
We can go round and round all day, but the idea that someone can’t voice their opinion against someone else and that someone can’t pick and choose what they want to promote feels very anti-pro-speech to me.
I question whether you actually realize the size of metaphorical gun barrel that company would be potentially looking down given the public's attitude on tech companies at the moment.
Government is one of those things where even the appearance of impropriety is as nad as the actual thing. That crossed the line into blatant quid-pro-quo.
And yet both have the same outcome. One is compelled at great ost to oneself to comply or otherwise suffer greater, possibly terminal (for that case) future harm.
I'm sorry, but no, I don't buy your assertion. Being in a position of power over someone or something and dropping a line like that is as good as an outright threat of violence, no matter how badly people don't want others to consider it as such because it makes their lives easier, and conscience lighter.
Spotify is not being compelled by any authority to remove or keep content on their platform. The only reason why Spotify hosts or removes content is because it's what they decide is best given market pressures.
Sure, but some external force compelling Spotify against their will to publish speech or censor speech, using their own resources, to harm themselves, is precisely not free speech.
Spotify sells subscriptions to content to make a profit. If something harms that why should they be forced to endure that?
Trust me, I know enough to not listen to the guy. I saw clips of his Bill Burr episode where tried to make wearing masks 'gay' in the bad way, and it kinda pissed me off.
I don't like the guy, but I just do what any other reasonable person does and don't listen to him.
Oh I liked the Rogaine + Burr episode where he shouted down a primatologist for being stupid and not checking the internet for wisdom first. He closed by mocking her for having a vagina. He's really an impressively free thinker.
That wasin't a podcast episode, it was a radio talk show called opie and anthony that ran from 1995 to 2014, this call was likely from around 2005. The whole point of the radio talk show was to bring on funny comedians like burr and rogan, have them talk shit and be funny, do over the top studio stunts, bring in wacky guests off the street, etc. The two hosts were at the top of the "shock jock" business in America for over a decade, and this hilarious 8 minute video is a golden slice of that kind of content. If you take anything in that vid seriously you have a weak sense of humour and are easily missled, rogan killed in the vid and so did burr.
I don't see the relevance of this comment. Free speech people don't think that agendas are anti-freefom-of-speech. Agendas are allowed. Lies are allowed.
There is always a limit to commercially sponsored free speech. Each company has to set their boundaries. I raised this because too many folks who don’t listen to his program think it’s just a salon where folks are given a platform to debate.
If active lies are being pushed, it’s a different manner.
Spotify is a left wing activist company. Just like Airbnb and GoFundMe.
Conservatives are dropping their principles- meaning why should we give the left free speech or services from private companies when they deny that to the right. We want revenge. We want AG from GOP states to investigate these companies for fraud, theft, or discrimination.
They are no longer a neutral company. Period, and this is war.
Conservatives can no longer expect services from lefty companies.
How about truckers, who are conservative, not deliver food to lefty cities. How will they like that. So now lefty's need to start their own lefty trucker companies so they can get food. It is a private business, go start your own trucking company to get food- how do you like that?
It'll be ineffective. He'll probably just move to something like Rumble that will just ignore all the smear pieces. Guy is popular enough that his audience will follow him, so now there's blood in the water Spotify is in a no win situation
Spotify made the mistake of acknowledging the legitimacy of the whims of cancel culture. In doing so, it always emboldens them and has the effect of drawing in new recruits to the cause.
>"You can please some of the people some of the time, all of the people some of the time, some of the people all of the time, but you can never please all of the people all of the time."
I don't take most quotes seriously because they are pseudo-wisdom, a tiny aspect of a quote is valid under some conditions doesn't make it a mathematical statements to be taken seriously all of the time.
Quotes can be correct some of the time, or be correct all of the time in a very narrow sense, or be correct under some circumstance, but quotes cant be correct all of the time, under any circumstance and in a broad sense
I know people who are intentionally chaotic either just to watch things go to hell or just be the odd one out, gave up on even attempting that long ago.
Spotify’s purchase of JRE turns them into his publisher/sponsor. When consumers and musicians cut ties they’re speaking with their $$ and saying they don’t want to support his content. That’s not the same as silencing or censoring him. There are countless open platforms he can speak his mind on.
Is scary how many people think like you. The Whitehouse is constantly pushing for censorship across all tech companies and platforms. AWS even cancelled an entire platform, parlor. Sure there are platforms to move to now but we're headed down a path where there won't be and people like you will be to blame.
Do you believe hosting companies should be unable to decline customers? Should Amazon have to host the KKK? The Taliban? Someone who screwed them over by declaring bankruptcy after a big bill?
Yes, infrastructure level services should be forced to accept all customers, including the KKK. The power company can't shut off someone's power because they are in the KKK. Verizon can't shut off your phone if you say racist things into it.
No, Spotify has decided that Joe Rogan's spreading of factually incorrect misinformation that could let to material harm is not the type of content that they want to platform. Not equivalent at all.
No. We’re deciding as individuals not to give business to entities that profit by promoting baseless conspiracy theories which pose a threat to public health.
It just so happens enough people are doing so to create some market pressure. Spotify is simply reacting to that pressure as all businesses do.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> I am for free speech, not for a bunch leftist technocrats deciding whom can speak on twitter, facebook, etc
You are for free speech, but against the exercise of free speech rights by private parties in deciding what speech to relay with their resources, which is the basis of the marketplace of ideas?
This take doesn't have the same bite when a handful of private companies have become the de-facto "commons". It doesn't matter who is doing the censoring when your speech has zero reach because you've been deplatformed by the modern equivalent of the town square. It is not a sufficient response to this problem to simply point to the rights of private companies to do what they want.
I can't even tell if this exact post is sarcasm or not but the fact that there will be a non-zero amount of people who think kicking the bro version of gwyneth paltrow off Spotify is comparable to the exterminaton of the Jews in Nazi Germany concerns me.
And you're under the impression that a private business exercising their right to delete podcast episodes on their platform is the first step to what? Progroms against the weed smoking quack demographic? If this is what listening to Joe Rogan does to a brain they better throw the entire catalog away
Free speech has never guaranteed a platform. Free speech has never mean you can say whatever you want without consequence. Free speech has never meant that people have to hear what you want to say.
These days it's easier than ever to get a platform. Speech has never been more accessible or more publishable. We are so far from "the death of free speech".
You say that from Taiwan where defamation is a crime, and people who speak in support of China can be charged under the foreign agents act. I don't think you know what free speech means. Which makes sense as Taiwan seems concerned about trying to control narratives.
About platforms you misunderstand. It's the platforms that have the power: to enable, that's also the power to control.
So we can be both in the situation where we are so close to universal free speech, and yet so close to the death of it too. I'm sure the Jews didn't believe they were going to be wiped out either.
I don't understand what you mean by that. I guess you just need to believe I've lost credibility because you don't know what to say because you don't know how to think about things.
You're not equipped to deal with discussions on the internet these days, like so many others, because nobody actually knows how to think about something that challenges their programming: the messaging they've uncritically absorbed.
Many people deal with the culture in a "consumerist" way. They consume little sound-bites, which are really talking points. Without thinking. And so of course they cannot deal with anything outside that, and they just want to "silence" it. Because they don't know how to critically think.
Sorry mate, if the first thing you go to is the holocaust and comparing it to something that isn't about the deaths of 6 million+ people, you're not equipped for civilized discussions full stop. Thanks
I think you're just scared of people being heard, when they say things you disagree with, but then to abuse the sacred protection afforded by a defense of the victims of Nazis, as cover for your own desire to silence people? Wrong and awful.
So silencing people who expose the same speech control, silencing and censorship tactics of the Holocaust, in the name of "protecting" the victims of the Holocaust? It’s an amoral abomination. You're undermining the thing you're pretending to protect.
And comparing based on death counts? Obscene! So cannot compare with the Japanese war crimes, Carcassian genocide, Taiwan White Terror, because less deaths? But then you can compare in reverse? Illogical.
So… "Sorry mate"? You should be apologizing to yourself, not to me, for that kind of talk. And "thanks"? Why thank me? Because you think me having different ideas to yours is a fake pretext for you to try to silence me?
So, oh, I’m “unequipped for civilized discussions”? No, it’s only you unequipped for civilized discussions: because of this amoral stuff, not civilized at all. And unequipped for online discussions because you’re not thinking, as I said. If you update those perspectives tho, and start really thinking about what you say and the consequences, I think you’ll be equipped. So no stress. Thank you!
Or to put it like you said it:
I'm sorry but if you think that silencing people who expose the same tactics used in the Holocaust, is the right theme to do to "protect" those Holocaust victims, then you're the only one unequipped for civilized discussions full stop forever. Thank you!
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Also to the commenter above.. What's wrong with Gwyneth Paltrow? She's good. And are you 'under the impression' ("in your words") that it's a bad thing if a "non zero" amount of people think differently to you? And that censoring those different to you is a good thing? That's just fucking crazy. Hahaha :p;) xx ;p !!!
Heh, yeah basically. You get it. But see the above comment for details. If you're unhappy with that, then don't be the one who next time leads with insults: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30226657
No really, Kristallnacht (Nov 1938) was nowhere near the first step, and people died that day.
Seriously, you're being incredibly offensive comparing Joe Rogan to what happened in Kristallnacht, and it's not ok to spread this online.
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The first steps were easily 1933 if not earlier, though to be fair modern propaganda was new then, and it's more understandable if people didn't understand the risks.
From Wikipedia:
Conditions for German Jews began to change after the appointment of Adolf Hitler (the Austrian-born leader of the National Socialist German Workers' Party) as Chancellor of Germany on 30 January 1933, and the Enabling Act (implemented 23 March 1933) which enabled the assumption of power by Hitler after the Reichstag fire of 27 February 1933.[14][15] From its inception, Hitler's regime moved quickly to introduce anti-Jewish policies. Nazi propaganda alienated 500,000 Jews in Germany, who accounted for only 0.86% of the overall population, and framed them as an enemy responsible for Germany's defeat in the First World War and for its subsequent economic disasters, such as the 1920s hyperinflation and subsequent Great Depression.[16] Beginning in 1933, the German government enacted a series of anti-Jewish laws restricting the rights of German Jews to earn a living, to enjoy full citizenship and to gain education, including the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service of 7 April 1933, which forbade Jews to work in the civil service.[17] The subsequent 1935 Nuremberg Laws stripped German Jews of their citizenship and prohibited Jews from marrying non-Jewish Germans.
These laws resulted in the exclusion and alienation of Jews from German social and political life.[18] Many sought asylum abroad; hundreds of thousands emigrated, but as Chaim Weizmann wrote in 1936, "The world seemed to be divided into two parts—those places where the Jews could not live and those where they could not enter."[19] The international Évian Conference on 6 July 1938 addressed the issue of Jewish and Romani immigration to other countries. By the time the conference took place, more than 250,000 Jews had fled Germany and Austria, which had been annexed by Germany in March 1938; more than 300,000 German and Austrian Jews continued to seek refuge and asylum from oppression. As the number of Jews and Romani wanting to leave increased, the restrictions against them grew, with many countries tightening their rules for admission. By 1938, Germany "had entered a new radical phase in anti-Semitic activity".[20
Why don't you just censor it then? That's what you'd prefer, right? You don't know how to think, so you cannot handle something that differs from what's already in your head, so you want it to be silenced. This is because you've engaged the culture in a "consumerist" way, so you're not thinking critically.
What is "offensive"? It's a personal reaction. So, as single-basis for morality, is a non-starter. Incredibly seriously, the only one who is incredibly wrong here is you, by pretending your emotional reaction constitutes a moral reality. It's incredibly wrong to think you can fake-justify limiting people's freedoms because of your own emotions.
The second point is you can't use the memory of Nazi victims as a stick to beat others with or to try to silence them. That's an abuse of the victims, and an abomination. It is good to have this Wiki quote here as a reminder or what happened, and how they didn't really see the signs. Just like now, this is not the first step--I agree--and yet people, now, like then, are not seeing the signs of what this will be. He's not cancelled yet. Canceling Joe will be the West's Free speech Kristallnacht.
So...my comment still stands, and your comment still has not aged well--you will not be satisfied with that, right? You'd rather see it eradicated, no? You're not equipped to deal with discussions online because you're not really thinking. So of course you prefer censorship.
It's flagged it's not deleted. You can still read it. A flag is a viewpoint of some people.
These sorts of discussions degrade the discourse, and I'd rather engage on topic points--and I am making an important point about people's reactions to info different to the info in their heads: rather than thinking, critically, they want to name-call (and censor 'internally' in their own heads), or censor.
Heh, go back to hitting the gym, man. You’re better at that.
Flagged [dead]. Not deleted. It does make it invisible tho.
(if you don’t put “showdead” on. You were the first to educate me in that, thank you.)
So…I guess I should post it again, then?
The-sis Ris-ing!
> Canceling Joe will be the West's Free speech Kristallnacht.
> Please do not equate podcasts with the actual Holocaust. (Ironically, equating the vaccine with the Holocaust is what got JRE in trouble in the first place)
> No, I'll say whatever I want. You're not happy about it? You'll just have to deal with your feelings. It's an analogy not an equation. Are you trying to say we can't invoke historical evils to talk about present ones? That's as bad as Holocaust deniers, and "ironically", that sort of verboten helped enable the Holocaust, whose memory you are only pretending to protect, but actually undermining.
> Not really. Your comments will probably be deleted.
But even if these things are deleted, or hidden for most...that's not great about censorship. Arguments disallowed because some people can't exercise control over their emotions and instead want to incorrectly try to blame others for them?...and then impose their will on others and restrict their freedoms? That's wrong. It's awful and it's the whole mess we're getting into and what I'm highlighting. And you folks want to use the same tactics again. That's so wrong. It's the same type of verboten that helped enabled the Holocaust by stifling dissent to the Nazis propaganda, plus, then abusing the sacred protection afforded by a defense of the victims of Nazis as cover for imposing your own emotional immaturity on others? That's an abomination.
As the fumes from the glue entered the lungs and made it's way through the bloodstream, a magical thought formed: "Canceling Joe will be the West's Free speech Kristallnacht".
So if unable to censor, then you "censor internally" in your head by pretending they're an idiot? I understand if you don't have a way to deal with my speech beside mockery, ridicule, or name-calling, ad-hominem or whatever. It's barely a little bit funny, not very funny, and the main thing is it shows you cannot think.
So unable to handle a thing different to what's in your head, because you haven't been thinking critically. Because you've only engaged the culture in a "consumerist" way, absorbing talking points, and getting trained that that when you push a little button that says, "You're a Nazi"--or "You're crazy"--then the "annoying ideas" will be silenced. But none of this is thinking.
And unless you think, then you are not equipped to handle online discussions or deal with information different to what's in your head, because of course you will want it to be silenced and censored.
Fair enough, I guess you “really believe it”, rather than just pretending. Which is worse? So you're just deluded then? Must be all the glue in your brain...hahaha
But, I'm unhinged? You're the one hallucinating people sniffing glue everywhere because you can't think about what they're saying, but... I'm unhinged? No. You're unhinged, all you.
It absolutely is censorship when the exclusive owner and distributor of the content refuses to distribute and takes it down. It's the very definition of it.
You might be conflating that with the first amendment and free speech, but that's entirely different.
This is the deal Rogan signed so it's also free market capitalism, but that's not mutually exclusive either.
This would probably happen under most economic systems / forms of government. You call it peak capitalism? I call it digital feudalism, and two earls are fighting over perceived digital territory.
In the world of venture capital, unlimited interest-free money supply from central banks and non-profitable companies 'making' billions, there is really no capitalism or free market economy to speak of. This economy is based on speculation, not supply and demand and so the investors (getting most of the free government money) make the rules, not the costumers.
They are removing episodes that have been around long before Covid. You have proven to be just parroting the same old song and dance without thinking for yourself and as a result are unfit to comment on this topic and should refrain from any more discussion regarding this matter.
I'm just providing you with an explanation for why you might have accrued downvotes beyond the initial one that you were complaining about. As you can now see, doing so has derailed a potential discussion you wished to have.
“Vote fuzzing” is a practice where a site’s reported vote count is intentionally made to report inaccurate figures. This is a strategy that some sites employ to attempt to throw off vote manipulation. I am not sure whether HN does it, but it is famously employed on Reddit.
Chances are he has an out if Spotify violates the content agreement. They knew precisely what they were buying…and I am sure he has a remediation capability in his contract when there is a content dispute.
Also, have an upvote, I hate fuck faces and dick faces who downvote because of cursing. Reminds me of all those morality prudes demanding album stickers and whatnot.
That must suck hard for Joe Rogan. He moved his show to their platform and now is getting massively moderated/censored. It's very interesting to see. In America, I always felt like people were very extreme with their freedom of expression, so much that you have so many abuses like the tea party and others that wouldn't exist in other countries that penalize forbidden speech (like denying the holocaust, being racist, etc.), limit politician air time, etc. So I'm guessing, like a lot of things in the US, private companies are now deciding to figure that part out.
I think he can probably wipe his tears with some of the $100 bills Spotify gave him.
But seriously, though. He surely knew the stakes when he decided to sign the deal with Spotify, moving from an open podcasting ecosystem to a corporate controlled one.
> So I'm guessing, like a lot of things in the US, private companies are now deciding to figure that part out.
For people who decided to take a giant paycheck from those private companies, yes.
He got paid $100M and his popularity is at least partly based on throwing red meat to stir up controversy. I think he’s thriving on attention from lots of people who would never otherwise think about him.
But on a serious note, podcasting was originally just mp3 files freely distributed to be played on ipods. It's anathema to ever have a centralized platform like Spotify hoarding exclusive rights and control.
Literally just talking to people is becoming a problem? He's done nothing but talk and you will see through this thread all of a sudden people who have problem never listened telling all sorts of lies. We are in a literal book burning era, and it is self imposed. Insane.
JR sold his catalog of intellectual property (podcast episodes) of his own free will and was paid very well for it: about $100M from what I can gather. What Spotify chooses to do with it is completely up to them, even if they bought it with the express intention of "burning" it all, i.e. never broadcasting it, that would still not be censorship. That would be nothing but exercising their intellectual property rights, that they paid for, just like buying the rights to a song that you hate to stop that specific recording from ever being played again is within your right, or even negotiating with the artist to never play it again.
He signed a "multi-year" exclusive deal (the details are fuzzy, for obvious reasons) which means he sold his trademark and time for money, which is how the market works.
Exactly what he sold (NDA, limitations on his speech in his free time etc.) we'll probably never know, but whoever calls this "censorship" needs a reality check. There exists plenty of proper censorship in the world if you look for it, and this isn't it.