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.
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.
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'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.
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.
>"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.
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.
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.
"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.
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"
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."
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.
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.
> 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.
> 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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.)
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.
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.
>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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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. 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.
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.
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.
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.
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".
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.
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.
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.
>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.
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.
>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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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."
>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.
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.
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?
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 555 ms ] threadWhat 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.
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.
Its quite possible that spotify would have to breach contract to get him to be silent about x or y issue.
-- Abe Lincoln
- Abe "Mohamez" Lincoln
Second to last line of https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Are you pretending people can only see the part of the post above the edit line when they vote, or something?
I downvoted you for being obnoxious in the edits.
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.
[April 13, 2021] https://www.businessinsider.com/joe-rogan-experience-podcast...
"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.
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"
A statement many people appeal to that nobody can substantiate.
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."
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.
“There was no significant difference in viral load between vaccinated and unvaccinated, or between asymptomatic and symptomatic groups.“
[0] https://www.ucdavis.edu/health/covid-19/news/viral-loads-sim...
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
I did do my own googling. Here is what I found [0] - a study that seems to indicate the opposite of your claim that
> Viral load does not have anything to do with chance of spread
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.
[0] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
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!
It comes from this: http://wondermark.com/1k62/
Look at what that thing is saying, then look at what you said. *PERFECT MATCH*.
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.
Your reply is pure, unadulterated walrusing.
It comes from an episode of Wondermark. http://wondermark.com/1k62/
.
> I did do my own googling. Here is what I found
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.
Sealioning[0]. The term is sealioning...
Your poor attempt at sounding smart has backfired and instead you sound like a dumbass.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning
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.
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.
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.
Depends on what you mean by 'reference', but if someone treats an awful source like an authority then that's not a terrible response.
Contrary to popular misconception (usually just in the US) it has nothing to do with the government.
No, it isn't.
It's so tedious explaining this over and over
Censorship is to imitate the Roman Censors.
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.
Stop.
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.
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.
How does a decentralized registry mean complete government control?
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”.
*The stories and information expressed here are artistic works of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything mentioned here as fact.
And who is it calling names?
Now, if the platform were a publicly funded news organization or TV station, then you could make that argument with a straight face.
A couple years ago there was a giant banner at the top of my premium Spotify page reminding me not to beat up Asian people.
Thank goodness they curtailed my race-based violence as a Spotify subscriber, but I don't see how that makes them money.
I suppose the virtue signalling was a calculated ploy, but it seems like a long and winding road getting from those banners to more premium accounts.
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.
[0]: https://www.instagram.com/p/CZYQ_nDJi6G/?hl=en
Worse, they spent a lot of money and knew what they were getting, so it just makes them look like idiots to investors.
That’s not playing the victim. It’s the plain truth.
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.
It is much smaller than restriction on advertising.
This user needs to be called out for consistently being needlessly inflammatory and adding little to nothing to the conversation.
If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
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.
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.
Maybe you should be more cool headed yourself.
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.
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.
Edit: Fixed incorrect usage (podcaster/broadcaster).
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.
This is literally peak Capitalism, something anybody that finds their way to & stays on HN should very much understand.
Money is currently talking, Spotify - a company - is reacting to money talking.
Any other interpretation of this is… I don’t know, but definitely not correct.
In the end, we’re once again shown, money is all that matters.
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.
https://www.businessinsider.com/fauci-doesnt-regret-advising...
EDIT: I know people have trouble with single sourcing. Here's a more sympathetic source to Fauci:
https://www.cnn.com/factsfirst/politics/factcheck_e58c20c6-8...
https://jremissing.com/
They're not removing the Covid mis-info episodes, they're removing ancient ones with (AFAIK) non-controversial subject matter.
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.
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.
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?
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.
Nobody is being silenced.
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.
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.
But even still, its censorship Rogan opted into to get $$$.
People threatening to leave if you let someone else talk is pretty much a good definition of being against free speech.
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.
> 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.
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.
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].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-BDS_laws
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?"
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?
> 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.
To your example, if the party had say 50k people at it, correct. I really wouldn't care what one person was saying.
That aside, I don't recall Rogan attacking anyone directly.
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.
Such actions are clearly anti free speech.
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.
Is the capital G government intervening with discourse? If not then there are no first amendment violations.
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?
"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."
>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.
Nobody is silencing JRE.
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?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simone_de_Beauvoir#Personal_li... [2] https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2021/4/16/reckoning-with-... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_petition_against_age_of...
I don't like the guy, but I just do what any other reasonable person does and don't listen to him.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__CvmS6uw7E&t=342s
"You're a fucking idiot go online and look it up."
"Go online and look it up."
"Yeah you've learned from shit from college. When was the last time you got online and researched primates."
"Stupid"
"Stupid"
"Stupid"
…
"I have a vagina."
If active lies are being pushed, it’s a different manner.
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.
Would we really want to further limit what right holders are allowed to do with their property?
Yes they did.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
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.
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.
> I’m “pro speech” and I love this!
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.
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.
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.
Spotify sells subscriptions to content to make a profit. If something harms that why should they be forced to endure that?
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?
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.
It’s another thing to actively pay to _create_ such content. That’s the big issue here.
I think the only way this wouldn’t have happened is if Rogan had made himself less controversial over time before a flare up like this occurred.
But I don’t think Spotify wanted a vanilla personality, if so why pay $100m for Rogan?
Possibly try to grease Rogan's hand to lay low on the vaccine topic/guests for a while.
Edit: I missed the obvious sarcasm. I need coffee.
Edit: Enjoy your coffee!
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.
See Voat.
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.
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.
That's not a legal issue, but a moral one.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
And give up $100M? LOL why on earth would that be the big lesson?
Don't bite the hand that feeds you, tear it off.
How Spotify ever thought this was a good idea still eludes me
We know what he chose. I’d argue it’s what the vast majority would choose.
But they both (Spotify and Rogan) knew what they were choosing.
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.
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.
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.
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.
What platform? Why do you need a platform? Podcasts were already 100% open. No platform necessary.
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.