> In his memo, Ek said the company is committing to “an incremental investment of $100 million” for licensing, development and marketing of music and audio content from historically marginalized groups.
It's astounding that Joe Rogan's contract with Spotify is worth more [0] than what Spotify is willing to "incrementally invest" in content from marginalized groups.
Rest assured they will be investing in only a tiny few of the very least marginalized people in said “marginalized groups.” That’s how identity politics works.
have you ever listened to a full session of Rogan? This is pretty much the opposite of what he does. He has thoughtful conversations with a variety of people, including Bernie Sanders. He talks like normal people do when having a conversation.
Anyone who is boiling down media content to "spreading antivax sentiments, disinformation, racism and hate" is almost certainly repeating nonsense they've heard, and it's clear that this commenter has either never listened to a JRE episode or is purposefully being disingenuous.
You've clearly never listened to JRE if you think he's spreading racism and hate lmao... Man's constantly saying to spread love and all that. He's also not against vaccines.
I hate this phrase, we are better than that. No one is asking businesses to become charities, what they are asking for them to become more socially conscious. Invest even a small quantity of profits into areas of the business that, while may not be profitable, could provide some level of support to society.
We as a society need to move past this excuse of "they are just a business" and not expect them to be better than that.
> Rogan is enormously popular. Content from marginalized groups is, almost by definition, less so.
Spotify should be using some portion of their profits to give these marginalized groups a platform to tell their story. We should not dismiss them.
what happens when they choose to support groups that you dont like? What if they decided to invest 15 million a year in supporting conservative causes or securing the border? Companies getting involved in things outside of their core reason is just asking for trouble. What you consider support to society may be very different than what someone else does.
Yes, it's not like the groups traditionally considered marginalized are underrepresented in popular music. What are they going to spend that $100 million on? Anglican bell-ringers and Appalachian skiffle groups?
Is it? I assume that they are both based on business valuations. Of course, Spotify did not know what they would get with Rogan, and probably would have paid less in retrospect. As it turned out he cost them more than 200 million when all is accounted for.
> It's astounding that Joe Rogan's contract with Spotify is worth more [0] than what Spotify is willing to "incrementally invest" in content from marginalized groups.
Not saying that what Spotify is doing is the right thing to do, but it is a bit less surprising when you look at the viewership numbers[0] (I know it is a tweet, but it links to the official Nielsen chart with the numbers). It kind of blew me away to see it.
JRE essentially has more viewers than the next 4 major shows combined (which are extremely mainstream, like major tv primetime averages or the Hannity show). The only thing that gets more viewers is Superbowl.
The ironic thing is that the most popular podcasts today grew with no investment or marketing. Anyone can start a podcast for free! If the content is good then it will go viral and there's no need to spend $100M.
Why would they do that? would investing $100 million in "historically marginalized groups" bring as many new ears as Joe Rogan? I don't think it would, why would a company that is required to maximize returns to share holders and investors invest money they know would not bring the strongest returns? Its a business, not a charitable institution.
>>It's astounding that Joe Rogan's contract with Spotify is worth more [0] than what Spotify is willing to "incrementally invest" in content from marginalized groups.
Capitalism can be very brutal at times.
The approach capitalism takes when a restaurant business begins to fail is to ask 'How can I make tasty food for cheap, so that more people can buy from me?'
This is really like asking why does Costo sell its hot dog deal for $1.50, why shouldn't they be more responsible selling a Salad or something. The right way to approach such questions is to ask, what do people want to eat?
Spotify knows enough people won't churn to make a huge difference (and honestly, the people who sign up because of this might even balance it out). However, what they can't lose is employees. If they become a place nobody wants to work at, they're actually screwed.
It's weird to see how inevitable the ending feels (to me, as an outsider). I'm 100% confident Joe Rogan will be removed from their platform; it's just a matter of how long it takes for Spotify to realize it's past the point of no return.
Which is just crazy. Out of all the things people could spend their times trying to improve, removing a podcaster from Spotify is very low on any rational list. Direct your energy at something important and get out of your bubble of anger at {popular to hate thing of the month}.
Arguably targeting the highest profile spreaders of misinformation and disinformation has the greatest impact, independent of the specific information.
Experts in any field disagree. Why are opinions of some experts "misinformation" and "disinformation", specially when it is about something that we definitely don't know enough about?
That’s why you’d only label the absolutely worse horseshit as “misinformation”. It’s not simply a name for the minority position whereever where there isn’t consensus.
More importantly it’s those areas where there is a time critical aspect to the misinformation or disinformation. Something that makes the idea of “hearing all opinions” not viable.
Things that come to mind include “polls won’t open until tomorrow” (on Election Day). Or, in this case, medical information.
There's always a convenient excuse for censorship. Who defines "worse horseshit" today? Tomorrow? Show me the information and I'll find an excuse.
A better standard is whether the communication rises to criminal offense or civil matter that caused harm (e.g. voter/election fraud, some sort of willful disregard/negligence). In other words, there's a standard/mechanism for redress already (there's an app for that).
If opinion doesn't violate a law or expose someone to a likely successful civil suit, you should be free to express it. Hard for me to imagine scenarios where this doesn't satisfy requirements. If you're concerned about timeliness, keep in mind that censorship doesn't happen quickly enough to stop the election fraud example you gave, unless you are advocating a 'ministry of information' scenario where conversations need to pre-approval to be aired - I would assume you would not advocate for such a thing, in principle.
> If opinion doesn't violate a law or expose someone to a likely successful civil suit, you should be free to express
Absolutely. I don’t think we are arguing freedom of speech here.
> If you're concerned about timeliness, keep in mind that censorship doesn't happen quickly enough to stop the election fraud example you gave
Is the fact that it’s futile a good reason to say that obvious fraud should not be removed on sight?
> A better standard is whether the communication rises to criminal offense or civil matter that caused harm (e.g. voter/election fraud, some sort of willful disregard/negligence). In other words, there's a standard/mechanism for redress already (there's an app for that).
That’s the bar for the law. Obviously the bar for anyone such as a broadcaster can be set at that point or lower. A company has to follow the law obviously but here the question is probably what to employees, prospective employees, customers, investors etc feel. The company adds up the numbers and decides who to include in their platform. Because it’s important to keep in mind that companies promote a select few voices on a platform. They don’t censor away an uncomfortable voice. They chose not to be the megaphone.
I’m not sure what the alternative is to the situation we are seeing? Forcing platforms to give everyone a voice?
There will always be arbitrary moderation and association in free media. Because it’s part of what free media is. We can’t have a free press without self-censorship.
"Free speech" is being progressively constrained to prevent "offense" and attacked with the murky dog whistle of "misinformation" or disloyalty (most commonly Russian agency), causing a national debate in the process.
> should not be removed on sight?
I just meant that 'on sight' is often too late to be any more effective than legal action for the Election Day example you gave. The prospective "damage" we risk in most cases that we hear stories about today is highly debatable (next point).
> Alternative to the situation we're seeing
We would need to agree on the situation "we" are seeing before focusing too much on solutions. I see outsized and misplaced risk intolerance. Indeed, intolerance for open dialogue and skeptical challenge generally if it contrasts with the government/institutional positions. The rapidity with which (ex-CIA now state department) spokesman Ned Price started accusing AP reporter Matt Lee of disloyalty a few days ago is pretty shocking and gross. But that's our reality right now.
> We can't have a free press without self-censorship
I think I very much disagree with this, but may not be understanding the statement. When you say "self" censorship, does that mean you and I showing restraint (systemically unreliable), or (industry collaboration with) a centralized institution (as in the royal "We") which would not be 'self-censorship' by definition? I think you can have free press without institutional censorship as long as we aren't speaking in complete absolutes and are acknowledging a place for the rule of law. Why? We've been modeling it pretty well for a while, and while everyone imagines the times they are living in are unprecedented, this country has faced far worse crises and managed to hold on to some bedrock principles unique to its model of government (delegated powers and inalienable rights of the people). What's really changed that requires a new call for censorship? I know of a few reporters making the case that we can never compete with China unless we become effectively more 'totalitarian' ourselves. I dismiss the reasoning out of hand entirely. I've heard some other reasons revolving around danger and offense but very wooly and inarticulate definitions/constraints that makes me think risk outweighs reward by a large margin.
I mean that a publisher, as a corporate entity will do what it needs to operate as a business and that might mean, for example, choosing to not to do business with people/companies/countries/whatever that might have any form of negative impact on the business but isn't illegal.
> I think you can have free press without institutional censorship
Not sure what institution you refer to here.
> this country
Not sure which country you refer to here. Spotify is a Swedish but global company, Rogan is from New Jersey... This story is pretty universal I think.
> What's really changed that requires a new call for censorship?
I'm not "calling" for censorship. I'm just stating the obvious: that companies and people doing self-censorship isn't something you can be for or against, "call for", protest against, or ban. You can argue that it's unfortunate when the "landscape of acceptable opinions" shrinks. This is a pendulum that will always, and has always, swung both ways (And is very different between different countries of course).
> intolerance for open dialogue and skeptical challenge generally if it contrasts with the government/institutional positions
Whenever something even gets near authorities and public instutitutions, we are in a whole different area. That's where actual free speech comes into play. The limit set by authorities on what you can and cannot say. The topic at hand here though is only when a privately owned company chooses to not do business with another company or person.
> That’s why you’d only label the absolutely worse horseshit as “misinformation”. It’s not simply a name for the minority position whereever where there isn’t consensus.
I think there's a gray area: minority scientific position that's being hyped by a faction for political reasons (e.g. a faction that's cherry picking outlier studies for the sole reason that they support their pre-existing policy preferences).
Now some might argue that "both sides" do that, and to a degree they might be right. However, I think there's another heuristic that helps avoid paralysis due to that: if both sides aren't trying to solve the problem in good faith, pick the one that is, and reject the one that's just reacting against proposed solutions.
> Experts in any field disagree. Why are opinions of some experts "misinformation" and "disinformation"
Find out if/why the experts are justified to hold their respective opinion, evaluate the facts and come to a conclusion. Just because someone says something does not make it true. Regardless if that person is an expert or not.
I agree with your approach if it's us as individuals making the evaluation, but if it's some centralized authority (even the private/public censorship arrangement as we have now) "clearing" allowable conversation in the public sphere, then would completely disagree. Free and open dialog is a hill to die on. One of those political principles that is, for me, more important than any 'safety' or conformity benefit claimed from censorship. I confess to being a bit gobsmacked that this is even a debate in the U.S., for as many times as it's been had and litigated in the past.
Oh sure, I don't support that. I would love to see people reward quality information instead of sentational infotainment with their "clicks" but alas that's not the world we're living in. -- What to do?
What impact? He’ll literally peace out with his $100M back to YouTube and free aggregators like Apple with much larger reach. He’s also the most popular podcast! So he wont have any problems finding a new network if need be. These people are delusional if they think they can change anything
Does that include governments? Or is there no objective standard -- the mis/disinformation is whatever the (local/state/federal) government is not currently supporting?
It's obviously a slippery slope approaching censorship this way.
Mis/disinformation should not be conceived of as skeptical questioning that may lead to dumb people making bad choices. That's a level of second-guessing and faux-benign concern that cannot guide policies of censorship. Skeptical questioning, dialog, and debate is more beneficial for society than it is dangerous to dumb people (who are high-risk even without overhearing the speculative conversations of others). There is some level of acceptable risk, whether it's vehicular traffic, or allowing people to speak their mind.
Think about the societal product of ten years living where skepticism of government is effectively outlawed vs a government routinely subjected to open skepticism. I think the latter is a stronger society.
Pretty sure racist remarks on the podcast and use of n-word casually isn't {popular to hate thing of the month}, so I respectfully disagree heavily with you here.
I don't think we actually disagree here; I totally think that racist remarks and casual use of the N-word is pretty bad, more than just a cringy thing to hate in a month.
I was trying to say that, using the parent comment's framework, even if it was the {popular thing to hate of the month} (which it isn't), if it is sufficiently bad, something should be done about it regardless.
If you listened to them in context they weren't racist. I listened to at least 5 of them in context, and they weren't racist and mostly portraying the opposite, so I'm satisfied he's not racist and this is a made up out of context attack as is typical of extremists. They post sound bites without context to enrage weak-minded people who won't seek out clarity on the situation. It's a tactic as old as propaganda.
People consider misinformation to be bad. The problem with censoring it is that I can think of many important instances in my lifetime where accepted narratives were later debunked and misinformation later became accepted fact. Since our understanding of COVID-19 has shifted quite a bit over the past two years, it seems to me the proper thing to do is to let people have freedom of speech.
I think it depends on so many things. In this particular case there are far worse problems in the world than Joe Rogan quoting someone and using the N word. I completely disagree with his stance on vaccinations but I also disagree that he's some sort of major source of disinformation.
In the general case, I think it's bad that the socially expected thing at the moment is to be angry at {something}. It is both bad for peoples mental health and in general and it detracts from more serious issues in the world.
Take for example the situation in Ukraine. Wouldn't it be more effective to be vocal to our politicians to say we don't want to start some catastrophic war there than to try and force a tech company to remove a podcast host? If Joe Rogan isn't removed, will people even remember this discussion in three months? Probably not, because by that time {someone} will have said {something} and everyone will be tweeting angry thoughts at them instead.
Nationalist/populist leaders losing support love looking strong for polls. Putin is losing support internally and is trying to look strong for the polls. Two sides both playing a game of chicken is risky and would be helped by internal pressures.
> I completely disagree with his stance on vaccinations but I also disagree that he's some sort of major source of disinformation.
Just to play with this a bit. Joe Rogan is unvaccinated himself, and he at least has recommended young people not to get vaccinated.
In the meantime ICU beds are/have been occupied by overwhelmingly unvaccinated people (proportionally) pushing out other urgent medical care, all over the world.
I agree that we can't blame everything on something/someone specific, but JRE is the biggest podcast on the planet, so I think it's fair to say he's probably one major source (among others).
There are different ways to 'do something' about it. One option could be to remove the thing that (some) people are performatively hating today.
Another option could be to release a statement like: "We understand your concern, however we are pursuing what we believe to be a greater good, etc. To help you avoid content you don't like, we will improve our labeling."
Taken to its logical extreme (which I realize is unfair to your point), what you are suggesting is "people should be able to post anything about anyone at any time and spotify should host it", which I think is ridiculous on its face? Should Spotify be hosting a Daily Stormer podcast? How about The Daily Shoah? [1]
I don't think they should. Let's be honest; this is corporate America. It's not about "principles", it's about money. If Spotify thinks that long-term hosting Joe Rogan is going to cost them more money, they're going to get rid of it.
[1] Do not look either of these things up. They are both outright white supremacist propaganda. You have been warned.
Right or wrong (I think right, personally), a lot of people have a lot of time on their hands because they're sitting at home due to a pandemic (while loved ones are getting sick). This is different than normal "cancelling" over a bad joke; it's about being tired of misinformation being spread that is elongating this virus and causing countless deaths.
>People are still sitting at home? That is not my experience even a little bit.
In a company I work for not a single person came back to our local office, in fact, many people decided to move further away from the city and we said publicly that forced coming back to the office will mean changing jobs for us. That's coming from ~150 developers and testers. Even my neighbour who works in a call centre works 4 of 5 days from home... Like is anyone coming back to your fancy cubicles or dirty openspaces?
Yeah since I got vaccinated I've been going out every weekend, most people ignoring the mask mandates and local pols have given up on speaking about or trying to enforce them lol.
Not a big fan of Rogan but he isn't spreading misinformation, he's speaking his mind, voicing his opinion. There was a time only a few years ago when this was a time honored concept called Freedom of Speech.
I agree. I think he has some dumb takes on things, but I actually signed UP for spotify as a result. Before I was just using a combination of adblockers to block 90% of spotify's ads.
It’s pretty crazy how anyone talking outside of the party line is now a racist and a anti-vaxxer and god knows what. You can’t stop people from thinking differently from you unless you’re willing to instate a China-level state
I haven't really followed Rogan's show since it became Spotify exclusive, but unless stuff has really went off the rails I don't recognize the qualities people are painting on him.
I don't know if this is some 4D chess move from Spotify, but I actually had to take a look at the two "antivax" episodes and neither had antivax message. So either this is all very clever marketing from Spotify or people try to make Rogan look bad for whatever reason and they don't realize that if you out right lie about things that are easy to verify it makes everything else you push less credible.
This was almost a year ago when vaccines were still new and the death/hospitalization rates of healthy 21 years olds from COVID is basically zero.
I’m 27 and have my jabs, and suggest others get theirs too, but I totally understand this perspective. In fact you couldn’t even get your vaccines in the UK last April at 21.
This is a bit of kitchen sink argument-- it was a long time ago! young people actually don't need the vaccine! he's just sharing his perspective! British people couldn't get vaccinated in April!
None of which addresses the claim in OP that people calling Joe Rogan "anti-vaxx" are "outright lying".
It is anti-vaccine to encourage young people not to get vaccinated. Simple as that.
But the 18-20+ group are still nodes in a complex system that includes others who aren’t so healthy. Our friend teaches an intro to sociology course at university. She also has a child with a chronic disease and an elderly parent whom she cares for. Walking into a lecture hall packed with unvaccinated 18+ students is unnerving, not because of their risk which is negligible but because of the downstream risks that they impose on the system. It’s not unreasonable to consider the risk of others with whom one interacts in reasoning through the decision to get vaccinated or not. Now I have no idea what exactly Rogan said but a categorical “No” is not the response I’d expect from someone who has really thought about the issues. But then again the blurring lines between entertainment and information has its risks.
That is damning evidence if we assume people can't change, but also depends on the context around it.
For example I can say right now if you are under 30 and your only option is to get Moderna don't take it. Wait until you can get something else. Risks/reward doesn't make sense, but as a result you should keep isolating until you have your double shot.
No idea what you're talking about, not interested in debating efficacy of vaccines on here, just pushing back on the idea that calling Joe Rogan anti-vaxx is an "outright lie"
As I've said multiple times I've only listened to the two new controvertial "antivax" episodes since he moved to Spotify. Maybe Rogan is antivax, but I did not get that from those two episodes.
And if you are curious you can search for Moderna in under 30 year old men.
It increases chances of inflamation of heart muscle in young men. If you've had it already then you are fine, but Moderna is not adviced for men under 30.
They're not saying 1 out of 8 vaccinations gives symptoms, but that covid is 8 times likelier than the vaccine to cause those symptoms.
From [0]:
> They found that, during the first 12 months of the pandemic, males aged 12 to 17 were most likely to develop myocarditis within three months of catching covid-19, at a rate of about 450 cases per million infections.
> This compares with 67 cases of myocarditis per million males of the same age following their second dose of a Pfizer/BioNTech or Moderna vaccine, according to figures from the US Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. Researchers added together cases after first and second doses to reach a total rate of 77 cases per million in this male age group triggered by vaccination, a sixth that seen after infection.
That's about ~7 times likelier from covid than vaccines. No data specifically on omicron (yet) though.
Spotify is feeling and responding to public and internal pressure about a figure who is polarizing. I don’t think they’re directly involved in any strategy beyond damage control.
But Rogan appears to be under a coordinated attack from media institutions and governments: horse dewormer, misinformation, racism — all of which is a little absurd.
It’s people reading about it from third party sources and then writing about it themselves to show Support and get their likes/shares and feel like they’re part of some Movement.
Extremists (both left and right) only see black and white, if you aren't with them then you are against them. If you don't cancel Joe Rogan then you're fascist racist piece of crap in their life outlook.
Like paying musicians reasonable amounts of money per stream? People have been complaining about this since the very beginning of Spotify. But as usual woke nonsense takes up all the air in the room because it's fiscally irrelevant.
removing a podcaster from Spotify is very low on any rational list. Direct your energy at something important
If someone is really offended or disagree with what he's broadcasting, then why do you think that removing him would be low on any rational list? His podcast reaches 11 million listeners, so getting him off the air seems like it would be pretty impactful.
Let’s assume what he’s said is awful and needs to be removed because it’s dangerous. I disagree with this, but I’ll assume it’s the case.
Spotify removes him.
He goes to YouTube or something.
His fans go there.
Zero tangible impact.
This can actually go far worse - after the Trump subreddits got taken down they moved to another domain which is a clone of Reddit but only about Trump and now you have a smaller echo chamber with the same people attending but less counter-information or moderation. So it’s possible that you can make things worse this way too.
It could make an impact if he was banned from Spotify and then quit podcasts entirely, but that’s not likely because it’s so popular.
All the time we discuss this we aren’t addressing truly horrific issues like Chinese persecution of Muslim minorities or the mobilization of troops in Ukraine or other things that people will actually remember in a few months or the UK government doing all sorts of interesting things.
But will they all follow him there? If 10% of his fans don't, then he's talking to a million fewer people than he used to. And, of course, if he says the same thing on Youtube, they'll start the same campaign to drop him from there too, until all that's left are niche providers where it's harder for people to find him.
Like you, I don't agree that he's said anything so bad that he deserves to be kicked off spotify or any platform, but if someone is passionate about it, doing so would reduce his reach, at least temporarily.
> This can actually go far worse - after the Trump subreddits got taken down they moved to another domain which is a clone of Reddit...
Is that really a failure? I imagine that cuts out a whole bunch of people who like the convenience of Reddit, or would only have found the subreddit from the front page. And it probably fractures communities, since more than one Reddit clone gets put up to replace a banned subreddit.
> All the time we discuss this we aren’t addressing truly horrific issues
Not everyone needs to be focusing on the most important issues.
Sure it will reduce his audience, but it won't change anything. These liberals who want to cancel Rogan will just move on to the next ineffectual cancellation. Joe Rogan will still have a podcast somewhere else which will be more resistant to cancellation agenda people, he's not going to stop or get cancelled lol.
They managed to recruit semi-famous computer scientists like Simon Marlow and Bryan O'Sullivan (well, buy his company and he stayed), both of whom could get jobs at basically any company.
This doesn't mean that the average engineer is any good there, just that they do have exceptional ones too.
You'll find a lot of very insightful blog posts on HN written by talented engineers that work at FB or are ex FB..
It's quite common knowledge that a lot of brilliant engineers are hired by FB. I am by no means a fan of FB but it's a known fact that they hire many excellent engineers.
They don't need to hire Dennis Ritchies, they need to hire people who are good enough to achieve their business objectives. Facebook's apps work, their site is performant, they are not drowning in storage costs, etc... they have the engineers they need. Their business problems are not due to engineering.
Found the updated list as of 2021[0]. Facebook is still in top 10, but the list in general seems extremely arbitrary. Amazon is in top 5 somehow? And Nintendo is in top 10, above FB? I can maaaaaybe see Amazon, but Nintendo makes zero sense to me on that list. CIA, FBI, and IBM ranked higher than Twitter? Also doesn't make much sense to me.
If I recall correctly, something similar happened at Coinbase, too.
It does appear that the contingent of people with this attitude are a loud, sizable minority. Having them all leave in anger, however, isn't the death of a company despite the amount of noise. Perhaps, maybe even the opposite: without the agitation of an ideological few, the rest will be free to get back to work.
This is exactly what happened Basecamp and Coinbase are thriving and even increased their diversity numbers. The vocal minority are just that and it is mostly a white woke crowd that claims to speak for other minorities.
No, because Spotify is showing more and more that there priority isn't really music anymore. I don't care about podcasts. Spotify has slowly started pushing them more and more. Now it's costing them music. I'm not alone either, most people sign up for Spotify for music. I think many music fans really care about music and supporting the artists who make it.
I don't care about Rogan or what he says. I don't want him censored. But the fact is that Spotify has less music now because he's on their platform.
This whole event shows to me where Spotify's priorities are. It's kind of just a final straw. I've switched to a platform that focuses on music and pays artists more.
I dunno, Dave Chappelle's Netflix special is still up; I think if the Spotify CEO commits to not pulling Rogan from the platform, he can outlast the outrage.
Besides, why would Rogan actually care, other than possibly the money, of which a great deal of it has already been paid? Joe Rogan doesn't need Spotify to remain the most popular podcast in the world by far, he just needs:
* A CDN willing to host the audio files and an RSS and/or Atom feed.
* Advertisers willing to pay him to play commercials during his podcast.
There are plenty of both, so Joe Rogan will be perfectly fine, he will not in any way be "silenced" by any action Spotify decides to pursue.
The "value" of all of this is that it sends a message to other podcasters, who are not even remotely as popular, that not everything is okay on Spotify's platform.
That's also probably fine. If you want to say racist things, don't go to Spotify. Podcasters won't get censored and Spotify doesn't have to send racism to its users. Everybody wins.
This situation, of all recent "cancellation" situations seems the least consequential, given how democratized podcasting actually is. The Internet is doing its thing w/r/t censorship, which is how it was built.
Debatable - I think the Internet is straining mighty hard to do its thing.
When major cloud vendors and government can conspire to shut down an alternative platform (I've already forgotten the example - Parler) right before an election, it's not a good testament. Parler is online today, it seems, but that's small beer considering how it all went down.
We still have the government spox calling for censorship, collaborating with private companies to implement censorship, and corporations buckling under the strain of PR, employee, shareholder, prospective regulatory, and litigation pressures to comply.
The problematic element here is increasing centralization of the Internet and collaboration with government. Either of those by themselves would be normal, the two combined speaks badly for the health of the Internet.
It will be interesting to see how Rumble, HowTube, GETTR, and other alternatives to the majors fare if they can gain traction with general audiences rather than servicing the politically disenfranchised. One might argue that they only survive now based on their obscurity. Arguably there is pressure to keep them obscure by labeling anything aligned with the principles of free speech as racist, hateful, dangerous, etc. Until society gets calloused to those accusations and a climate of constant fear generally, alternative communication channels are held under an effective ceiling of success.
> I'm 100% confident Joe Rogan will be removed from their platform
Really? I'm 90% confident Joe Rogan will not be removed from their platform. They spent 100M to get exclusive rights to his podcast, and their market cap subsequently went up 1B. The best future for Spotify is in aggregating podcasts, not music, and Joe Rogan is the number one podcaster in the world.
This isn't some minor player on their platform -- Joe Rogan represents Spotify's best chance at a future where they aren't just competing away profits against Apple Music. They aren't going to give that up lightly. Not to mention, they knew what they were getting into when they brought him on.
Really depends on the spine of the CEO. If he sticks to his guns, makes a blanket statement essentially saying "Rogan is staying, deal with it" then he will stay. If the CEO allows activist employees to continue to cause problems then Rogan will be removed.
Please, everyone is replaceable. These folks won't even cause a ripple. Everyone has got a price, everyone....
This whole event is driven by the Wokism and the Progressive/Liberal Media. Rogan is killing them and making them all irrelevant. They have to virtue siganl and project in an effort to save themselves.
I'll quit Spotify if they get rid of Rogan, so will a lot of other folks.
I'm not big on boycotts, much less big talk about them, but I confess I lean the same way. If Rogan gets the boot, I would seriously consider dropping Spotify out of principle assuming there's some other service to cover my music interests. Censorship is a cancer and it seems to be metastasizing in the US still, not in remission. Voting with my wallet is one of the few things I can do in response.
As a general point for SaaS business this is a very fair point. However...
Honestly, so what if Spotify doesn't have the top talent? All of their investments are in content, not R&D. The application itself is very stable and globally ready. I won't trivialize the SRE required to do that, but most of the operational components are already there. Spotify's moat is its content and its network effect, which is why a company like Tidal can't compete no matter how much money they throw at R&D talent.
So I think I disagree...content is everything in this specific space.
My guess is that the listener numbers for Rogan have gone through the roof because of this and the vast vast majority of paying Spotify customers don't care. I'm don't like Rogan but I have no intention of cancelling my paid subs.
I doubt many real employees are going to leave either. Look at the Netflix protests around Dave Chapelle. Very few actual protesters and I think there was only one person who ended up resigning.
The world would become a much better place if we would all start publicly saying: "I agree with what you are saying but you are over reacting"
And who is the arbiter of what's "explicit" and not "offensive"? You? Me? Twitter? I totally support Spotify exercising its corporate agenda (whatever it may be), but let's not pretend there's some sort of moral high ground here.
The targets of the slur are the ones who get to decide to co-opt it or not and if they want outsiders to use it not.
The n-word has been co-opted, in a fashion, by the black community. Members of the black community, for the largest part, would still would be offended if I used that word.
Queer has been co-opted by the LGBQT+ community, members of that community have asked me to use queer to describe them. Still feels weird to me to even to type it here. The f-word is out of bounds.
Freedom of speech lets you use any of those words but, like all speech, others may judge you harshly because of those words and how you use them.
And? Spotify is apologizing partially because Rogan used the N word. Some people consider it offensive so they apologized. Why not apologize over the others who did the same thing?
So Spotify is only going apologize if somebody who says the N word also apologizes. Since all those musicians who used it aren't apologizing then Spotify won't?
Rogan didn't apologize for 'being offensive', he did so for unknowingly causing offense by mentioning the so-called 'N-word' in sensible contexts. It ought to go without saying that taking offense at such mentions, as if someone were somehow inherently complicit with slavery and/or racism for the mere neutral utterance of even the most hateful slur can only be described as irrational, even magical thinking.
Except that isn't what he apologized for at all. It requires "irrational, even magical thinking" to interpret his words that way.
From Rogan [1]:
“the most regretful and shameful thing that I’ve ever had to talk about publicly.”
“horrible, even to me.”
“I was trying to make the story entertaining and I said it was like we got out and we were in Africa. It’s like we were in ‘Planet of the Apes,’” he said, adding that it was an “idiotic” thing to say that “looks terrible even in context.”
That's of course one thing he apologized for. And in context it could easily be excused as humor, though of course I would hardly fault anyone for taking offense at such a crass and unbecoming "joke".
He did both, and the N-word thing was the most direct causal factor (because it had been pointed out in a viral video). The Planet of the Apes/Africa "joke" was something that Rogan chose to also talk about since it made sense to deal with both. (Similarly, he chose to remove a far greater amount of podcasts than those that had explicitly been mentioned as containing the problematic word, to deal with the issue as a whole. This is him taking sincere steps to rectify the offense he may have inadvertently caused. He clearly could have "gotten away" with far less, had he wanted to.)
It's interesting to see how the economic model of the platform changes the controversy. If he were still on YouTube / generic podcast platforms, it's harder to become de-platformed, but of course you make less money.
He doesn’t even seem antivax… listening to the controversial podcasts… he just sounds more curious about it… asking questions and talking to people shouldn’t be a bad thing…
So then what are people supposed to do? Not question things? Or are we questioning this too much now..? I'm not entirely sure what to take away from your "common concern troll tactic"...
No. Of course you can question things. Just be completely open about your position and where you're coming from and not hide behind "I'm just asking questions bro".
If just asking questions can damage your position, why does the motivation of the person who asks those questions even matter? So what if he's a concern troll? That doesn't make the problems that these questions highlight any less valid.
yeah, I wish the answer to "concern trolling" were to link an FAQ that debunks all the common concern troll tactics, rather than to immediately and permanently ban that person from whatever "private space" they're currently using to communicate
He's not against vaccines. From the episodes I have listened to, he is hesitant to take this new one, and questions why young healthy people are being forced to take it, and states (which I somewhat disagree with) that they shouldn't take it.
He's not an expert in the field and probably did not see any of the data. I think that he should not give medical advice like that to the general public.
Tbh, he's a self-professed moron and he commonly states that people should not take what he says seriously. If people want to go ahead and be stupid and take his word as gospel, then that's on them. I'll listen to whatever medical people he has on and take what they're saying into consideration, but idk why anyone would ever take Joe Rogan's medical advice...
Although he is right that there should be more focus on holistic approaches to help instead of just "TAKE THIS FUCKING VACCINE OR ELSE", which is kind of what it has been here in Canada. Meanwhile a large percentage of Canadian (and obviously Americans) are overweight, eat like shit, and don't exercise at all. All things which significantly increase the chances that someone, even if they're young, will have adverse effects from the COVID virus.
I think that's his "thing", promoting his own viewpoints through selection of guests and asking them certain questions. I don't mind that though.
What I mind is that he himself is (apparently) quite gullible. In his ig video he promised to "balance" opinions. So, what is the balance between facts and utter bullshit?
Of course a talk show host with free range on guests is going to take on guests he finds interesting and often the most interesting view points are the ones that contradict with the status quo.
To me the quests seem to have some credentials and they have/had concerns over some aspects of how Covid is being treated, how the vacine is being administered, and how Covid restrictions are beign handled. They are interesting points and might be worth considering. I for one have been curious since the begining why Ivermectine was just banned fast with a smear campaign instead of doing actual trials and showing it doesn't work against Covid.
None of this is antivax or utter bullshit in my mind
Like Jordan Peterson rambling about climate change?
> I for one have been curious since the begining why Ivermectine was just banned fast with a smear campaign instead of doing actual trials and showing it doesn't work against Covid.
I you actually cared about that, then you'd know that trials were conducted and the data did not warrant a recommendation. For example, early results where discussed here in April 2020: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7172803/
Sorry but, by insinuating a smear campaign you are now the one who's spreading bullshit.
>Like Jordan Peterson rambling about climate change?
Yeah, Peterson isn't authority on climate change, but does that mean he shouldn't say what he thinks about it? Also I was refering to the supposed antivax episodes. I haven't listened to the Peterson episode. As I said I haven't listened to JRE since it became Spotify exclusive expect for these two episodes.
Sorry you need to help me with the link you provided. I tried skimming it and I just saw that ivermectine showed promise and that due to higher than usual dosage more research is needed.
>Sorry but, by insinuating a smear campaign you are now the one who's spreading bullshit.
Again what bullshit? If we have a drug that shows promise, but as soon as people start talking about it all news agencies start telling how the drug is "a horse dewormer" and implying that only idiots would even consider using "a horse dewormer" on humans when it is literally our best antiparasitic that has been used for decades on humans and animals. Obviously don't take any drugs that are made for animals, but I don't understand why potential treatment was dimissed so hard out of hand at a time when didn't have enough vaccines for everyone in need and we have bunch of Ivermectine in every pharmacy around the world.
I don't think you actually read the information behind that link. The outlook was very much more differentiated than "showed promise". I'm not interested in continuing this discussion since you seem more interested in framing that story instead of looking at the facts. Bye.
I think YOU have not read the information behind the link. Literally the first section:
> Caly et al. at Monash University in Australia recently published a paper in Antiviral Research, reporting that ivermectin, a medication widely used for the treatment of certain parasitic diseases in humans and livestock animals, inhibits the replication of SARS-CoV-2 in cell culture (Caly et al., 2020). *Despite the authors' cautious conclusion that ivermectin "warrants further investigation for possible benefits in humans,"* the paper has excited widespread interest on medical and veterinary websites, which often incorrectly describe the drug as a treatment or cure for COVID-19. These inappropriate statements led to a warning by the US FDA, that *ivermectin in veterinary products should not be used for human therapy*
The letters and the author of the original paper all seem to be concerned about the dosage being higher than what is used to treat parasites and the amount could potentially be toxic which in their words: "important reason to be very cautious in considering ivermectin as a therapeutic for viral infection in human patients."
Again I ask you to help me with finding the section that says the drug fails to meet criteria for further studies?
EDIT: I tried to highlight the interesting points, but I can't figure it out so I will just put the two quotes here:
1. Despite the authors' cautious conclusion that ivermectin "warrants further investigation for possible benefits in humans,"
2. ivermectin in veterinary products should not be used for human therapy
It definitely isn’t! The problem is when individuals with dubious motivations and skills are given access to a platform that influences tens or hundreds of millions.
The blessing and curse of having the worlds information at our fingertips is that we can usually find the data, groups and echo chambers to mirror any narrative.
If you were hesitant about certain medical procedures, you now have access to groups and data that can and will reaffirm that you should not undergo that procedure because of X, Y & Z.
Wether X, Y & Z are directly relevant, or even statistically probable - it doesn’t matter anymore. Group think, peer pressure, societal pressures and desires to be “free” and “independent” etc start to reign.
The backlash against Spotify is warranted - it’s just a large corporation that people can condem and refuse to do business with. Same with governments.
Perhaps not exactly the same analogy, but muslims won’t generally use the services offered by a Church, or some people might go see their Shaman over a GP, or vegans will avoid the meat-heavy BBQ place. We have our beliefs, some are misguided, some are dangerous. Covid is pretty dangerous, and deadly to certain demographics.
I suspect that those people would argue with you that racial issues in this country are hardly a settled matter or history, that even unintentional acts can have consequences, and that a sort of willful blindness to both of those facts helps perpetuate, not solve, issues of racial disparity and injustice in this country.
Where does it stop, though? At this rate, another 20 years down the line someone is going to be digging up our social media posts and canceling us for saying "the N word" directly instead of more indirectly saying "vicious racial epithets"
I mean, further down the road than here. In addition to casually dropping the N-word, Rogan said some stuff that would've been considered Racist even in the way-back times of 2010 when he said them.
> I suspect that those people would argue with you that racial issues in this country are hardly a settled matter or history,
I agree but as brown person who is a first generation immigrant and dealt with racism myself, Banning the utterance of a word used in a fairly clinical context draws attention away from actual systematic racism that exists today.
I hate to quote right wingers but this is very much virtue signaling and its dangerous for all te precedents it sets without doing anything that would actually benefit marginalized people.
Agree, but I think it's an And, not an Or. I can't imagine a world in which we've dealt with actual systemic racism in which casual use of the N-word is just sort of fine.
I'm black, but not American. I find the idea that people can't even say a word in quotations or reference to be inane. Although I understand and respect why American black people don't like it. What bothers me is that people can lose their jobs/livelihoods just from saying it.
There's an interesting kind of inside-out thinking re: jobs in these kinds of matters - I thought it was on display in a pretty sharp way during the Kavanaugh hearings - Brett Kavanaugh was being vetted as a supreme court justice, one of 9 people in a lifetime appointment as some of the most influential individuals in the US government and consequently the world. By all measures, Kavanaugh did some dumb shit as a young adult - he displayed a sharp lack of judgement. Does that make him a bad person? Maybe, maybe not. It does, however, suggest that maybe he's not one of the 9 most qualified individuals in a country of 350M to serve a lifetime appointment exercising his judgement in arguably the most consequential institution in the country.
Is Joe Rogan a bad guy? Who knows. Sounds like he was an idiot a decade or so ago, but maybe he's better now. Is he entitled in any vast cosmic sense to a platform with millions of listeners and an actual effect on politics and the real world? No, not really. He's got one, sure, but it's not like we as a society are in any way obligated to either agree that that should continue or not take steps to see it stopped if we feel it's doing harm. Should Joe Rogan be shot or thrown in jail? Absolutely not. Does he have an inalienable right to a mass influence on society? Also absolutely not.
This sort of notion that we as society don't have some vested interest in the construction of the world we live in that doesn't trump some random person's ability to earn an obscene amount of money is just strange. Joe Rogan isn't going to be poor if he loses his show and he's not going without a meal if Spotify decides he can't say the N-word in a podcast.
Idk from listening to other people who know him personally, and from listening to 100s of episodes of his podcast, he seems like a great person. Says a lot of stupid shit and has fuck ups, but who doesn't. I don't really think that anyone does or doesn't deserve to have an audience. Also I find the idea that someone "should not have a platform" whatever the fuck that means, because they say stupid shit, to be a very short-sighted approach to the problem of people believing stupid things.
If I were a person who was vaccine-hesitant or straight up didn't want the COVID vaccine for whatever reason, all this talk would just make further entrenched in my beliefs. Which is clearly what is happening.
I also am also very much against calling for people's jobs/livelihoods what have you. Regardless of if I agree/disagree with their positions. I do wish Rogan would have just stayed independent, especially because I listen to far fewer of his podcasts because Spotify is a shit platform. But honestly, who would turn down a multihundred million dollar deal. So whatever, I don't blame him. But clearly he is seeing the repercussions of that.
I am black, and other than white people and professional activists that have a clear interest on this narrative, me and most of my friends are totally ok with uttering the word to discuss it if you are not using it as a slur against someone/someones.
In my experience, it seems to be mainly an American thing... Maybe because I'm Trinidadian and I've grown up hearing a bunch of different races say it I just think it's silly to care..? I find idea of forbidden words to be so silly. Just gives them far more power if anything.
Of course he isn’t racist. Also smart people learn from their mistakes and he did apologize. This is blatant canceling attempt and they are being unsuccessful and this is why so desperate.
For the internet mob today context doesn't matter. Only the size of the mob.
I think it went too far when people started to link to Spotify's CEO's physical address on Twitter, it was almost like "Well here is the address, it would be a shame if something happened...".
And any "celebrity" involved in all this, if they think they aren't next on the list, they're deluded...
Just to clarify: He isn't one of the regular podcasters. He is Spotify's poster boy with a $100M exclusive deal. It's perfectly reasonable for people not to want to fund his stance. This isn't asking for censorship. The moment you start making exclusive deals with your content creators, you're not a platform anymore. You're media with explicit political stance now. You bear the consequences.
My rule of thumb is that if you hear more about "the controversy" rather than the actual details of said controversy, it's not as bad as you think. I suppose it's related to Betteridge's law of headlines, mainly because if you really wanted to get people riled up about what someone said or did, you'd simply show it. Granted, something really obscene can still be quoted by replacing offending words with ***?
i think the bigger issue here is the instance where he has a half white half black guest on saying he "has a black body and white brain, so best of both worlds!" It's really gross and appalling that someone would even jokingly say something about that.
I totally agree, it seems that intent means absolutely nothing when using words. Talking about a word is exactly the same as using it against someone in a derogatory way. This same thing happened to the Papa Johns pizza guy. He was talking about how we've made a lot of progress when it comes to racist speech and when talking about it, used the n-word to talk about the n-word, and was canceled as a result.
Honestly I don't get it, I'd love if someone would spell that out for me why someone using the word with extremely obvious lack of malicious intent is vehemently shouted down with the same intensity that actual white supremacists receive.
Actual white supremacists don’t pose any threat to the prevailing system of thought, so mostly get ignored as marginal wackos.
On the other hand, mainstream people who dissent, even in a minor way, pose a serious threat. They challenge orthodoxy in a way that crazy racists don’t. The real danger? People might start listening to them!
That’s why they get shut down harder. It’s about silencing credible dissent.
Actual harm prevention is a distant secondary concern.
To be fair, that word is rather unique in being a hateful slur which is also inherently bound to the utter dehumanization of a large group of people. If you take the 'use-mention distinction' seriously, this doesn't mean you can't mention the word as part of talking about something else altogether, with zero intention to dehumanize blacks. But many people subscribe to a kind of magical thinking where "bad" words are imbued with some kind of mana or occult power. To that sort of mindset, you of course would never ever dare to say the word out loud unless you were fully intending to bring us all back to that dismal time of oppression.
It's not an overtly stated narrative and doesn't have to make rational sense, only be emotionally appealing. But it's quite self-consistent in its own terms, and it's ultimately what justifies this kind of outrage.
It's really easy to detect whether the word was used. It's orders of magnitude harder to determine intent. I think it's just a case of optimization. The anti-worders view that they have so many people to correct that it's just not feasible to figure out intent. Better to just slam everyone and move on to the next target.
It's definitely not a just strategy, but it might actually be a fairly effective one.
mind of a white person, yea pretty dumb. one quote out of context. It was from 10 years ago and he's clearly grown a lot from that. everyone says stupid shit once in awhile.
AS someone who's also in an interracial relationship, I applaud his support and hope my own children benefit from genetic diversity.
Here's a hot take for you, HN: this all started with the maniac known as Alex Jones. Everyone was okay with him getting deplatformed because he's a cooky conspiracy theorist that genuinely spreads insane misinformation (and was hurtful to Sandy Hook victims). Now, we're going after literal radio personalities. Tomorrow? Musicians? Authors?
Book burning has never led to a socially-uplifting culture. I think being a free speech quasi-absolutist is the only viable position (apart from obvious edge-cases like yelling "fire" in a crowded movie theater, fighting words, etc., which SCOTUS is very careful to delineate).
Folks really need to read some John Stuart Mill. It's a shame to see such vitriolic response to a right our ancestors literally died for.
Given Joe Rogan was given 100 million dollars, and is constantly pushed on the front page of my Spotify account, and his show continues, in what way is he being deplatformed, or silenced?
Quote:
Spotify’s chief executive said it was Rogan’s decision to remove episodes of “The Joe Rogan Experience” from the platform following discussions with the company about “some of the content in his show, including his history of using some racially insensitive language.”
I took dvt’s comment to refer to the wider phenomenon of unpopular opinions getting deplatformed. And although JRE is still on the air, didn’t Spotify remove like 70 episodes?
No, this is how it’s supposed to work. People say things that are unpopular, then other people complain and withdraw their support. Each of those people are exercising free speech.
This is what the “marketplace of ideas” looks like. The evolving tension between different factions and ideas is a feature, not a bug.
Hmmm. No. In a "marketplace of ideas," each idea has a price. Some are held dear and others are viewed as worthless. Regardless, each idea is available to you, and to future generations, for consideration. What we see here is not a functioning "marketplace of ideas." Rather, it is the illiberalism of puritan times and other dark ages where certain thoughts and attitudes could not be considered because a faction explicitly removed them from the marketplace.
When reading books like "The Scarlet Letter" way back in my younger days, I always thought of them as being so irrelevant. Unfortunately, I didn't understand they were actually sci-fi novels. My only consolation now is that perhaps a new crop of Americans eventually emerges that views the moral panics of today with as much exasperation and disdain as I viewed the moral panics of the 1600s.
I think in a marketplace of ideas, many ideas are available, and the better ideas are embraced. The bad ideas stay on the shelves. But they do not get thrown out, at least the bar for that should be high.
Agreed. I would add that in a marketplace of ideas, people try to persuade others, rather than pressuring authorities to intervene in the expression of ideas they disagree with.
And to take the metaphor one step further, which may be to go too far, if someone does not want to have their ideas on the same shelves as some other ideas, the best is if the marketplace is big enough that there are other shelves to move to. For example, there are more record companies than there are streaming services. The consolidation that seems inevitable in the Internet era works against a truly diversive market. Traditional bookshops worked much better for this. The convenience that many values, to have everything in one place, has disadvantages too.
I agree with you but I am really interested to watch this play out. It feels like, for lack of better term, the rabid 'cancel culture' folks are dug in on canceling someone who seems by all appearances un-cancellable(sp?). This guy has a way bigger following than Jones did.
It will be interesting to see how this goes. My hope/wish is that Spotify tells everyone to pound sand, and this trend of mobbing people can begin to end. Or they do the opposite, Rogan goes to some more erm, 'open' platform, and we end up with some weird even more divided internet.
> I think being a free speech quasi-absolutist is the only viable position
I disagree.
I think that deplatforming Alex Jones is probably a good idea, and deplatforming JRE is probably a bad idea. If I could choose, I'd deplatform one but not the other.
I think that's a perfectly consistent point of view to hold. The line has to be drawn somewhere - but I don't know why it can't be at a nuanced place in between these two.
The CEO should have instead come out at the start and said hey we're a platform for music and content for diverse tastes and interests. Some people might find some content undesirable. Period. Full stop.
If employees really can't handle diversity of thought and expression, they should seek new, fresh employees (with hiring filters to screen out intolerant minds).
One of the most depressing things in the 2022 is the amount of seemingly smart people from most developed democracies in the world who desperately want more censorship.
I think it stems from a rise in marxist thinking. Marx was obsessed with socioeconomic class and, in his mind, we should restructure society to eliminate classes because classes are oppressive. In this philosophy anything is acceptable if it means eliminating or reducing some form of oppression. So censorship is totally valid under this philosophy.
Today, people don't talk much about "class" but the same ideas have been adapted to race, gender, and other areas that could be viewed as oppressive.
> anything is acceptable if it means eliminating or reducing some form of oppression
I don't know about Marx, but that sounds closer to a comic book villain than a real person. And skimming through some search results, it looks like he heavily supported freedom of the press.
Like I said, I don't know about Marx, and I don't know what he means by "the means of communication". But for one thing, it seems (from the paragraph above the line you quoted) that he views this as a necessary and temporary evil:
> despotic inroads on the rights of property... unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of production.
And for another, he's also said to have said (in "Comments on the Latest Prussian Censorship Instruction"):
> The real, radical cure for the censorship would be its abolition; for the institution itself is a bad one, and institutions are more powerful than people.
That seems pretty unambiguously against censorship.
One could argue that maybe it’s a means to get rid of the profit incentive that is inherent with means of communications that has always existed within a capitalistic society…
“ In March 2003, the American country band the Dixie Chicks, now known as the Chicks, publicly criticized President George W. Bush and the imminent Allied invasion of Iraq…
After the statement was reported by the British newspaper The Guardian, it led to backlash from American country listeners, who were mostly right-wing and supported the war. The Dixie Chicks were blacklisted by thousands of country radio stations, received death threats, and were criticized by other country musicians. The backlash damaged sales of the Dixie Chicks' music and concert tickets and lost them corporate sponsorship.”
> blacklisted by thousands of country radio stations
I don't think it's the same. DJ's make decisions what to put on air like editors; they express their personal musical and political views, and so does the radio station as a whole. They don't advertise to the listener as if they played all the possible music in the world, but Spotify does. It has curated playlists, of course, but all of it's messaging to the user has an implicit assumption that user will be able to find whatever she wants there, and it won't be expression of Spotify's musical or political views.
“In a poll by an Atlanta radio station, 76 percent of listeners who participated responded they would return their Dixie Chicks CDs if they could.[15] Protesters in Bossier City, Louisiana, used a tractor to destroy Dixie Chicks CDs and other items.[13] The Kansas City station WDAF-AM placed trashcans outside its office for listeners to dispose of their CDs, and displayed hundreds of emails from listeners supporting the boycott.[13]
The drinks manufacturer Lipton canceled its promotional contract with the Dixie Chicks.[4] Maguire's tour bus driver resigned in protest of their remarks.[11] Maines said: "It seems unfathomable that someone would not want to drive us because of our political views. But we're learning more and more that it's not that unfathomable to a large percentage of the population."[11]”
Well as someone who supports the JR show saying whatever the hell they want to say and thinks free speech is a pillar of democracy, I'm not sure I would call any of this censorship. Who's doing the censoring? Neil Young? Paying subscribers who don't want to pay to support a service they feels amplifies a voice they feel is dangerous?
This is more nuanced than "free speech" vs "dangerous misinformation".
Brian Armstrong of Coinbase looks smarter everyday. Just tell the disgruntled employees that if they don't want to be there then leave, enough with the disruption of the workplace. Focus on your job.
Arguably, it was Spotify's decision to bring trolls like Rogan onto the platform, knowing full well that this is exactly what they were -- which was where politics got "brought into the job" in the first place.
Not their employees' understandable disgust with that decision.
1. You have clearly never listened to an entire episode of Rogan if you think he's a troll.
2. If the employees are disgusted and not just virtue signaling they should leave. The CEO should encourage them to do so.
I really like Bruce Springsteen :)
So to summarize, you have never listened to an episode of Rogan but you think he is a troll, meaning your opinion is based on clever clips put together to influence your opinion. hmm, I feel like there is a word for people who think an argument is strong but don't really know what they are talking about. Another word for people who just pile on to an opinion because that's what the cool kids are doing. Buy hey, quack quack, amirite :)
“But if you’re like 21 years old, and you say to me, ‘Should I get vaccinated?’ I’ll go no. If you're a healthy person, and you're exercising all the time, and you're young, and you're eating well...like, I don't think you need to worry about this."”
It's like anything with any other performative figure: an author, a musician, a film maker, or a talk show how host... sometimes a single snippet of their work (as long as it is correctly represented) is all you need to make a make perfectly valid impression.
In Rogan's case -- whether he's a troll or a simpleton (i.e. isn't so much trying to push buttons, but honestly doesn't understand the scientific arguments he's critiquing, or the harm he encourages by doing so) doesn't matter -- not to me, any ways. And I really don't need to invest any more time figuring out whether he has a more "nuanced" side or not. There are literally thousands of "must-see/read/hear" items on my list. Many years overdue.
If you see him in a different light, that's perfectly fine.
I do like Springsteen actually, so we're on the same page there at least.
Fair enough, each to their own.
I would argue that there is nothing wrong with his statement (I am triple vaxxed) but I feel like we are likely coming at this from opposing viewpoints. Either way, appreciate the conversation and wish you well.
I don't care about any controversy what Rogan said.
What I care about is that, as a paying customer who has no interest in podcasts at all, I have a podcast section front and center at the top of my home page with no way of removing it. I'm annoyed that many of these podcasts have pictures that are not safe for work when I try to use Spotify to listen to music at work. I'm annoyed about being automatically opted into pop-up advertisement despite paying for an ad-free experience. I am annoyed about more and more music that is nothing like any of my listening habits being mixed into more and more of my mixes, and later finding out that artists have the option to pay to have their music treated preferentially and inserted into unrelated streams. I'm annoyed that I have music playing regularly that I don't like and I don't want to listen to, but I can't simply tell Spotify to not play it in the future (the official response being "Just listen to more music that you do like, and the AI will learn eventually!")
Spotify was a platform with an ad-supported model and a paid ad-free option, and now it's a platform with an ad-supported model and a slightly-more-subtle ad-supported paid option. Not worth it. A modern music platform having no ability to filter out music you don't want to listen to is unacceptable.
The controversy has a lot to do with what's wrong with Spotify right now (podcast-pushing and chasing more and more ad revenue, treating even their paying customers as nothing more than an advertisement base to leverage for more revenue), but it is a symptom of the ad-revenue chasing greed that's infecting everything right now.
Yeah, I think this is really what it comes down to. I'm in the same boat. I joined Spotify to stream music, not podcasts. Spotify has fully shown that they're going to put podcasts ahead of music at this point (probably because they can stuff in ads). This was the final straw for me. I've switched to a platform that focuses on music and pays artists more.
I don't care about Rogan, and I don't think many people who are upset with Spotify do. They care that music doesn't seem to be Spotify's top priority.
> I've switched to a platform that focuses on music and pays artists more.
What platform is that, and are you really sure?
Every platform that has a free tier has dismal pay per play numbers. But what I care about is how much of my $10 per month the artists and songwriters get. AFAICT it's almost universally 70%. But I'd be happy to be corrected, because I'd be really easy to convert away from Spotify at the moment...
Bandcamp, you “own” the music and get the source files, plus unlimited high quality streaming using their app. You pay what the artist asks for their work, usually 7-9$ for a full album.
They even have creators Fridays which removes bandcamps chunk of the revenue (15%)
After having met someone who’s making >$1m/mo from Spotify, I suspect that the reason they push podcasts over music is that someone listening to a podcast is typically listening for much longer than someone who’s putting on music.
(Even if you check your own experience and think back to times you start music and just let it play for multiple hours, consider that there are people who start one podcast and keep listening through multiple episodes)
That's the problem with our new app-based web, isn't it? No control to the user at all. To web companies you're just an imprinting machine for their corporate overlords trying new cool techniques of psychological manipulation and social control. Is it any wonder society is so fucked up?
> What I care about is that, as a paying customer who has no interest in podcasts at all, I have a podcast section front and center at the top of my home page with no way of removing it. I'm annoyed that many of these podcasts have pictures that are not safe for work when I try to use Spotify to listen to music at work.
This plus threatening to kill the podcast open ecosystem by creating walled gardens is why I can't help but chuckle at the mess Spotify have gotten themselves into. How did no one at Spotify see this coming? By buying an exclusive deal, they are going to be seen as a publisher of content, and not just as a mere platform. Of course people are going to hold them responsible for that content.
I agree. Spotify is pushing features that benefit their bottom line but that most people don't want.
Even if you wanted to try Spotify as your main podcast client, some podcasts were never on Spotify because Spotify wouldn't pony up. Others went Spotify exclusive.
I cancelled Spotify and signed up for Apple Music. It's much improved from 2015, especially in terms of discovery and curated playlists. And it supports ALAC, which is a nice bonus (Spotify still has no FLAC option).
I'm in the same boat. I want my membership fee to go to the musical artists I listen to and not to podcasters whose speech I may or may not agree with. This additional $100M to minority voices is even more of my money not going to the artists I listen to.
I support free speech. I don't support treating your paying customers like an ad audience. "free speech" is a weak justification for scummy business practices.
I've been emailing and tweeting spotify since that podcast section showed up to get it the hell out of my sight or give me the option to do it myself, and they always point to feature requests or say they've sent along the feedback but it's nonsense. I have a family plan though and I've been putting off the discussion of "We're moving away from Spotify, prepare your playists etc."
I actually started a trial of Deezer a couple days ago. So far, I'm pretty satisfied with it. I'm going to be moving my Spotify family plan over to it soon.
I was pleasantly surprised at the ability to just transfer all my Spotify favorites automatically, too. You'd think they'd advertise that ability more prominently, given that's probably a big thing holding many existing customers back.
Interesting... If I hadnt heard about the Rogan controversy I wouldn't have known Spotify had a podcasts section. I've never seen a podcast section in Spotify. I wouldn't even know where to go look for it. Maybe it is because I pay for it?
It is really easy to switch to Tidal using tunemymusic. The audio quality is better and the artists will get the royalties instead of podcast hosts you never listened to. Still works with android auto and the UX is pretty much a clone of Spotify so the learning curve is very low. The migration dropped about 1% of songs from my playlists but nothing I'll actually miss.
I keep trying to like Tidal, but Spotify beats it for me every time.
On a content front, Tidal has 76% of my Spotify liked tracks and 83% of tracks from liked playlists (stats from Soundiiz). That's a not insubstantial amount of music to lose access to.
That might be okay, except nobody comes close to Spotify's recommendations for me. I can count on the overwhelming majority of the "Daily Mix" or "Track Radio" content to be a good fit for me, and to have passable choice in musical moods. By comparison, Tidal gives me poor individual recommendations, and can't keep a consistent atmosphere during a playback session. I'm sure Tidal has great music that Spotify doesn't, but it's not showing that to me.
I like that Tidal has higher-quality playback, gives artists a bigger cut, and has better controls over banning tracks/artists, artist credits, etc. And Tidal's recommendations are pretty far ahead of most other services for me. But I just can't count on turning it on without constantly skipping songs.
> I do have pretty pedestrian music tastes though...
That could very well be the difference. I don't know what normal numbers are, but Spotify says I listened to 2,518 artists last year, and I seldom listen to anyone that plays on the radio.
Streaming music services seem heavily geared towards mainstream tastes. That's understandable, but doesn't work well for me personally.
The woke mafia will destroy the US and Silicon Valley giving room for other tech centers like China, India, Nigeria, Kenya, and Russia. They will try to cancel everyone including their own. The US has a mid-term coming up and part of this is political warfare.
While Facebook employees were busy with their gender neutral bathrooms, China was building Tiktok.
I still hope they hold the line though. There has been enough cancellation of people lately. I was hoping the practice might become less trendy or the failure of twitter, whichever comes first.
“There are no words I can say to adequately convey how deeply sorry I am for the way The Joe Rogan Experience controversy continues to impact each of you,” Ek wrote in a memo obtained by the Los Angeles Times. “To be clear, his guests dropping the N-bomb left, right and center -- we knew about that all along, and never had a problem with it as such - as long as it came attached to a decent revenue stream. But when it became a controversy, and started to negatively impact our stock price -- that's when we started to have second thoughts."
278 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 245 ms ] threadIt's astounding that Joe Rogan's contract with Spotify is worth more [0] than what Spotify is willing to "incrementally invest" in content from marginalized groups.
0: https://www.wsj.com/articles/spotify-strikes-exclusive-podca...
Edit: What astounded me is that his contract was so huge, I had no idea until I just looked it up.
Spotify is a small player though and Facebook is the big winner in this category.
"Ivermectin alone is capable of driving this pathogen to extinction."
"I don't think it's true there's an increased risk of myocarditis from people catching Covid-19 that are young, versus the risk from the vaccine."
Guest claims that if you get vaccinated after having had Covid, you're at greater risk of harmful side effects.
https://www.bbc.com/news/60199614
I hate this phrase, we are better than that. No one is asking businesses to become charities, what they are asking for them to become more socially conscious. Invest even a small quantity of profits into areas of the business that, while may not be profitable, could provide some level of support to society.
We as a society need to move past this excuse of "they are just a business" and not expect them to be better than that.
> Rogan is enormously popular. Content from marginalized groups is, almost by definition, less so.
Spotify should be using some portion of their profits to give these marginalized groups a platform to tell their story. We should not dismiss them.
https://www.billboard.com/charts/hot-100/
I think this could be true and at the same time I think they might have even paid him more knowing what they know now.
Really? They didn't view any of the 1700 something streams they imported ahead of the deal?
Not saying that what Spotify is doing is the right thing to do, but it is a bit less surprising when you look at the viewership numbers[0] (I know it is a tweet, but it links to the official Nielsen chart with the numbers). It kind of blew me away to see it.
JRE essentially has more viewers than the next 4 major shows combined (which are extremely mainstream, like major tv primetime averages or the Hannity show). The only thing that gets more viewers is Superbowl.
0. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FIMfLxpXMAgpgIs?format=jpg&name=...
Capitalism can be very brutal at times.
The approach capitalism takes when a restaurant business begins to fail is to ask 'How can I make tasty food for cheap, so that more people can buy from me?'
This is really like asking why does Costo sell its hot dog deal for $1.50, why shouldn't they be more responsible selling a Salad or something. The right way to approach such questions is to ask, what do people want to eat?
It's weird to see how inevitable the ending feels (to me, as an outsider). I'm 100% confident Joe Rogan will be removed from their platform; it's just a matter of how long it takes for Spotify to realize it's past the point of no return.
More importantly it’s those areas where there is a time critical aspect to the misinformation or disinformation. Something that makes the idea of “hearing all opinions” not viable.
Things that come to mind include “polls won’t open until tomorrow” (on Election Day). Or, in this case, medical information.
A better standard is whether the communication rises to criminal offense or civil matter that caused harm (e.g. voter/election fraud, some sort of willful disregard/negligence). In other words, there's a standard/mechanism for redress already (there's an app for that).
If opinion doesn't violate a law or expose someone to a likely successful civil suit, you should be free to express it. Hard for me to imagine scenarios where this doesn't satisfy requirements. If you're concerned about timeliness, keep in mind that censorship doesn't happen quickly enough to stop the election fraud example you gave, unless you are advocating a 'ministry of information' scenario where conversations need to pre-approval to be aired - I would assume you would not advocate for such a thing, in principle.
Absolutely. I don’t think we are arguing freedom of speech here.
> If you're concerned about timeliness, keep in mind that censorship doesn't happen quickly enough to stop the election fraud example you gave
Is the fact that it’s futile a good reason to say that obvious fraud should not be removed on sight?
> A better standard is whether the communication rises to criminal offense or civil matter that caused harm (e.g. voter/election fraud, some sort of willful disregard/negligence). In other words, there's a standard/mechanism for redress already (there's an app for that).
That’s the bar for the law. Obviously the bar for anyone such as a broadcaster can be set at that point or lower. A company has to follow the law obviously but here the question is probably what to employees, prospective employees, customers, investors etc feel. The company adds up the numbers and decides who to include in their platform. Because it’s important to keep in mind that companies promote a select few voices on a platform. They don’t censor away an uncomfortable voice. They chose not to be the megaphone.
I’m not sure what the alternative is to the situation we are seeing? Forcing platforms to give everyone a voice?
There will always be arbitrary moderation and association in free media. Because it’s part of what free media is. We can’t have a free press without self-censorship.
"Free speech" is being progressively constrained to prevent "offense" and attacked with the murky dog whistle of "misinformation" or disloyalty (most commonly Russian agency), causing a national debate in the process.
> should not be removed on sight?
I just meant that 'on sight' is often too late to be any more effective than legal action for the Election Day example you gave. The prospective "damage" we risk in most cases that we hear stories about today is highly debatable (next point).
> Alternative to the situation we're seeing
We would need to agree on the situation "we" are seeing before focusing too much on solutions. I see outsized and misplaced risk intolerance. Indeed, intolerance for open dialogue and skeptical challenge generally if it contrasts with the government/institutional positions. The rapidity with which (ex-CIA now state department) spokesman Ned Price started accusing AP reporter Matt Lee of disloyalty a few days ago is pretty shocking and gross. But that's our reality right now.
> We can't have a free press without self-censorship
I think I very much disagree with this, but may not be understanding the statement. When you say "self" censorship, does that mean you and I showing restraint (systemically unreliable), or (industry collaboration with) a centralized institution (as in the royal "We") which would not be 'self-censorship' by definition? I think you can have free press without institutional censorship as long as we aren't speaking in complete absolutes and are acknowledging a place for the rule of law. Why? We've been modeling it pretty well for a while, and while everyone imagines the times they are living in are unprecedented, this country has faced far worse crises and managed to hold on to some bedrock principles unique to its model of government (delegated powers and inalienable rights of the people). What's really changed that requires a new call for censorship? I know of a few reporters making the case that we can never compete with China unless we become effectively more 'totalitarian' ourselves. I dismiss the reasoning out of hand entirely. I've heard some other reasons revolving around danger and offense but very wooly and inarticulate definitions/constraints that makes me think risk outweighs reward by a large margin.
I mean that a publisher, as a corporate entity will do what it needs to operate as a business and that might mean, for example, choosing to not to do business with people/companies/countries/whatever that might have any form of negative impact on the business but isn't illegal.
> I think you can have free press without institutional censorship
Not sure what institution you refer to here.
> this country
Not sure which country you refer to here. Spotify is a Swedish but global company, Rogan is from New Jersey... This story is pretty universal I think.
> What's really changed that requires a new call for censorship?
I'm not "calling" for censorship. I'm just stating the obvious: that companies and people doing self-censorship isn't something you can be for or against, "call for", protest against, or ban. You can argue that it's unfortunate when the "landscape of acceptable opinions" shrinks. This is a pendulum that will always, and has always, swung both ways (And is very different between different countries of course).
> intolerance for open dialogue and skeptical challenge generally if it contrasts with the government/institutional positions
Whenever something even gets near authorities and public instutitutions, we are in a whole different area. That's where actual free speech comes into play. The limit set by authorities on what you can and cannot say. The topic at hand here though is only when a privately owned company chooses to not do business with another company or person.
I think there's a gray area: minority scientific position that's being hyped by a faction for political reasons (e.g. a faction that's cherry picking outlier studies for the sole reason that they support their pre-existing policy preferences).
Now some might argue that "both sides" do that, and to a degree they might be right. However, I think there's another heuristic that helps avoid paralysis due to that: if both sides aren't trying to solve the problem in good faith, pick the one that is, and reject the one that's just reacting against proposed solutions.
Joe Rogan is primarily being attacked for bringing in Dr. Peter McCallaugh. Name one thing that he has said that is "misinformation".
Find out if/why the experts are justified to hold their respective opinion, evaluate the facts and come to a conclusion. Just because someone says something does not make it true. Regardless if that person is an expert or not.
It's obviously a slippery slope approaching censorship this way.
Mis/disinformation should not be conceived of as skeptical questioning that may lead to dumb people making bad choices. That's a level of second-guessing and faux-benign concern that cannot guide policies of censorship. Skeptical questioning, dialog, and debate is more beneficial for society than it is dangerous to dumb people (who are high-risk even without overhearing the speculative conversations of others). There is some level of acceptable risk, whether it's vehicular traffic, or allowing people to speak their mind.
Think about the societal product of ten years living where skepticism of government is effectively outlawed vs a government routinely subjected to open skepticism. I think the latter is a stronger society.
I was trying to say that, using the parent comment's framework, even if it was the {popular thing to hate of the month} (which it isn't), if it is sufficiently bad, something should be done about it regardless.
In the general case, I think it's bad that the socially expected thing at the moment is to be angry at {something}. It is both bad for peoples mental health and in general and it detracts from more serious issues in the world.
Take for example the situation in Ukraine. Wouldn't it be more effective to be vocal to our politicians to say we don't want to start some catastrophic war there than to try and force a tech company to remove a podcast host? If Joe Rogan isn't removed, will people even remember this discussion in three months? Probably not, because by that time {someone} will have said {something} and everyone will be tweeting angry thoughts at them instead.
I don't have the impression that any politician (in the west) wants to do that.
Just to play with this a bit. Joe Rogan is unvaccinated himself, and he at least has recommended young people not to get vaccinated.
In the meantime ICU beds are/have been occupied by overwhelmingly unvaccinated people (proportionally) pushing out other urgent medical care, all over the world.
I agree that we can't blame everything on something/someone specific, but JRE is the biggest podcast on the planet, so I think it's fair to say he's probably one major source (among others).
Another option could be to release a statement like: "We understand your concern, however we are pursuing what we believe to be a greater good, etc. To help you avoid content you don't like, we will improve our labeling."
I don't think they should. Let's be honest; this is corporate America. It's not about "principles", it's about money. If Spotify thinks that long-term hosting Joe Rogan is going to cost them more money, they're going to get rid of it.
[1] Do not look either of these things up. They are both outright white supremacist propaganda. You have been warned.
I'm not saying Spotify should do anything. I'm saying it has other ways to 'do something' about these kinds of things.
People are still sitting at home? That is not my experience even a little bit.
In a company I work for not a single person came back to our local office, in fact, many people decided to move further away from the city and we said publicly that forced coming back to the office will mean changing jobs for us. That's coming from ~150 developers and testers. Even my neighbour who works in a call centre works 4 of 5 days from home... Like is anyone coming back to your fancy cubicles or dirty openspaces?
I don't know if this is some 4D chess move from Spotify, but I actually had to take a look at the two "antivax" episodes and neither had antivax message. So either this is all very clever marketing from Spotify or people try to make Rogan look bad for whatever reason and they don't realize that if you out right lie about things that are easy to verify it makes everything else you push less credible.
I’m 27 and have my jabs, and suggest others get theirs too, but I totally understand this perspective. In fact you couldn’t even get your vaccines in the UK last April at 21.
None of which addresses the claim in OP that people calling Joe Rogan "anti-vaxx" are "outright lying".
It is anti-vaccine to encourage young people not to get vaccinated. Simple as that.
SARS-CoV-2 causes much higher rates of myocarditis in kids than the vaccines do:
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7035e5.htm
Kids should still get vaccinated. They are at low risk from SARS-CoV-2, but risk of the vaccines are still even lower.
https://www.businessinsider.com/delta-variant-made-herd-immu...
For example I can say right now if you are under 30 and your only option is to get Moderna don't take it. Wait until you can get something else. Risks/reward doesn't make sense, but as a result you should keep isolating until you have your double shot.
And if you are curious you can search for Moderna in under 30 year old men.
From [0]:
> They found that, during the first 12 months of the pandemic, males aged 12 to 17 were most likely to develop myocarditis within three months of catching covid-19, at a rate of about 450 cases per million infections.
> This compares with 67 cases of myocarditis per million males of the same age following their second dose of a Pfizer/BioNTech or Moderna vaccine, according to figures from the US Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. Researchers added together cases after first and second doses to reach a total rate of 77 cases per million in this male age group triggered by vaccination, a sixth that seen after infection.
That's about ~7 times likelier from covid than vaccines. No data specifically on omicron (yet) though.
[0] https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg25133462-800-myocardi...
But Rogan appears to be under a coordinated attack from media institutions and governments: horse dewormer, misinformation, racism — all of which is a little absurd.
Like paying musicians reasonable amounts of money per stream? People have been complaining about this since the very beginning of Spotify. But as usual woke nonsense takes up all the air in the room because it's fiscally irrelevant.
If someone is really offended or disagree with what he's broadcasting, then why do you think that removing him would be low on any rational list? His podcast reaches 11 million listeners, so getting him off the air seems like it would be pretty impactful.
Spotify removes him.
He goes to YouTube or something.
His fans go there.
Zero tangible impact.
This can actually go far worse - after the Trump subreddits got taken down they moved to another domain which is a clone of Reddit but only about Trump and now you have a smaller echo chamber with the same people attending but less counter-information or moderation. So it’s possible that you can make things worse this way too.
It could make an impact if he was banned from Spotify and then quit podcasts entirely, but that’s not likely because it’s so popular.
All the time we discuss this we aren’t addressing truly horrific issues like Chinese persecution of Muslim minorities or the mobilization of troops in Ukraine or other things that people will actually remember in a few months or the UK government doing all sorts of interesting things.
But will they all follow him there? If 10% of his fans don't, then he's talking to a million fewer people than he used to. And, of course, if he says the same thing on Youtube, they'll start the same campaign to drop him from there too, until all that's left are niche providers where it's harder for people to find him.
Like you, I don't agree that he's said anything so bad that he deserves to be kicked off spotify or any platform, but if someone is passionate about it, doing so would reduce his reach, at least temporarily.
Him moving to Youtube or somewhere that isn't paywalled likely increases his availability to those who aren't willing to pay to listen to him
Is that really a failure? I imagine that cuts out a whole bunch of people who like the convenience of Reddit, or would only have found the subreddit from the front page. And it probably fractures communities, since more than one Reddit clone gets put up to replace a banned subreddit.
> All the time we discuss this we aren’t addressing truly horrific issues
Not everyone needs to be focusing on the most important issues.
How do we know they aren't just average or mediocre software developers?
This doesn't mean that the average engineer is any good there, just that they do have exceptional ones too.
It's quite common knowledge that a lot of brilliant engineers are hired by FB. I am by no means a fan of FB but it's a known fact that they hire many excellent engineers.
0. https://www.businessinsider.com/most-attractive-companies-fo...
Also, 'good' engineers won't keep you at the top. Once the best start to flee, they my accumulate at other companies. Birds of a feather and all that.
https://world.hey.com/dhh/basecamp-s-new-etiquette-regarding...
If I recall correctly, something similar happened at Coinbase, too.
It does appear that the contingent of people with this attitude are a loud, sizable minority. Having them all leave in anger, however, isn't the death of a company despite the amount of noise. Perhaps, maybe even the opposite: without the agitation of an ideological few, the rest will be free to get back to work.
I'm not so sure about this. Other streaming platforms are all basically at least as good as Spotify now, and it isn't too hard to switch.
I don't care about Rogan or what he says. I don't want him censored. But the fact is that Spotify has less music now because he's on their platform.
This whole event shows to me where Spotify's priorities are. It's kind of just a final straw. I've switched to a platform that focuses on music and pays artists more.
Only hints about podcasts is the "Own Episodes" button on left and then I have to scroll down 6 screens until I see "Your recommended episodes".
How is the music experience gotten any worse after they added podcasts?
The music expierence is worse because artists like Neil Young are no longer on the platform.
Besides, why would Rogan actually care, other than possibly the money, of which a great deal of it has already been paid? Joe Rogan doesn't need Spotify to remain the most popular podcast in the world by far, he just needs:
There are plenty of both, so Joe Rogan will be perfectly fine, he will not in any way be "silenced" by any action Spotify decides to pursue.The "value" of all of this is that it sends a message to other podcasters, who are not even remotely as popular, that not everything is okay on Spotify's platform.
That's also probably fine. If you want to say racist things, don't go to Spotify. Podcasters won't get censored and Spotify doesn't have to send racism to its users. Everybody wins.
This situation, of all recent "cancellation" situations seems the least consequential, given how democratized podcasting actually is. The Internet is doing its thing w/r/t censorship, which is how it was built.
When major cloud vendors and government can conspire to shut down an alternative platform (I've already forgotten the example - Parler) right before an election, it's not a good testament. Parler is online today, it seems, but that's small beer considering how it all went down.
We still have the government spox calling for censorship, collaborating with private companies to implement censorship, and corporations buckling under the strain of PR, employee, shareholder, prospective regulatory, and litigation pressures to comply.
The problematic element here is increasing centralization of the Internet and collaboration with government. Either of those by themselves would be normal, the two combined speaks badly for the health of the Internet.
It will be interesting to see how Rumble, HowTube, GETTR, and other alternatives to the majors fare if they can gain traction with general audiences rather than servicing the politically disenfranchised. One might argue that they only survive now based on their obscurity. Arguably there is pressure to keep them obscure by labeling anything aligned with the principles of free speech as racist, hateful, dangerous, etc. Until society gets calloused to those accusations and a climate of constant fear generally, alternative communication channels are held under an effective ceiling of success.
Really? I'm 90% confident Joe Rogan will not be removed from their platform. They spent 100M to get exclusive rights to his podcast, and their market cap subsequently went up 1B. The best future for Spotify is in aggregating podcasts, not music, and Joe Rogan is the number one podcaster in the world.
This isn't some minor player on their platform -- Joe Rogan represents Spotify's best chance at a future where they aren't just competing away profits against Apple Music. They aren't going to give that up lightly. Not to mention, they knew what they were getting into when they brought him on.
Please, everyone is replaceable. These folks won't even cause a ripple. Everyone has got a price, everyone....
This whole event is driven by the Wokism and the Progressive/Liberal Media. Rogan is killing them and making them all irrelevant. They have to virtue siganl and project in an effort to save themselves.
I'll quit Spotify if they get rid of Rogan, so will a lot of other folks.
Honestly, so what if Spotify doesn't have the top talent? All of their investments are in content, not R&D. The application itself is very stable and globally ready. I won't trivialize the SRE required to do that, but most of the operational components are already there. Spotify's moat is its content and its network effect, which is why a company like Tidal can't compete no matter how much money they throw at R&D talent.
So I think I disagree...content is everything in this specific space.
I doubt many real employees are going to leave either. Look at the Netflix protests around Dave Chapelle. Very few actual protesters and I think there was only one person who ended up resigning.
The world would become a much better place if we would all start publicly saying: "I agree with what you are saying but you are over reacting"
The n-word has been co-opted, in a fashion, by the black community. Members of the black community, for the largest part, would still would be offended if I used that word.
Queer has been co-opted by the LGBQT+ community, members of that community have asked me to use queer to describe them. Still feels weird to me to even to type it here. The f-word is out of bounds.
Freedom of speech lets you use any of those words but, like all speech, others may judge you harshly because of those words and how you use them.
Really, this isn't hard to figure out.
The two aren't mutually exclusive.
From Rogan [1]:
“the most regretful and shameful thing that I’ve ever had to talk about publicly.”
“horrible, even to me.”
“I was trying to make the story entertaining and I said it was like we got out and we were in Africa. It’s like we were in ‘Planet of the Apes,’” he said, adding that it was an “idiotic” thing to say that “looks terrible even in context.”
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/05/arts/music/joe-rogan-spot...
All his did was use it while quoting someone else or talking about the word himself. Crass, sure but hardly racist or transgressive against anyone.
It would be highly offensive if he called someone that but thats not what happened here.
And for the record, I'm very against his antivax stance, I just don't think he should be cencoered for it and he's certainly not a white supremecist
I also don't think he's necessarily antivax, but he's not innocent on this point.
Although he is right that there should be more focus on holistic approaches to help instead of just "TAKE THIS FUCKING VACCINE OR ELSE", which is kind of what it has been here in Canada. Meanwhile a large percentage of Canadian (and obviously Americans) are overweight, eat like shit, and don't exercise at all. All things which significantly increase the chances that someone, even if they're young, will have adverse effects from the COVID virus.
To me the quests seem to have some credentials and they have/had concerns over some aspects of how Covid is being treated, how the vacine is being administered, and how Covid restrictions are beign handled. They are interesting points and might be worth considering. I for one have been curious since the begining why Ivermectine was just banned fast with a smear campaign instead of doing actual trials and showing it doesn't work against Covid.
None of this is antivax or utter bullshit in my mind
Like Jordan Peterson rambling about climate change?
> I for one have been curious since the begining why Ivermectine was just banned fast with a smear campaign instead of doing actual trials and showing it doesn't work against Covid.
I you actually cared about that, then you'd know that trials were conducted and the data did not warrant a recommendation. For example, early results where discussed here in April 2020: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7172803/
Sorry but, by insinuating a smear campaign you are now the one who's spreading bullshit.
Yeah, Peterson isn't authority on climate change, but does that mean he shouldn't say what he thinks about it? Also I was refering to the supposed antivax episodes. I haven't listened to the Peterson episode. As I said I haven't listened to JRE since it became Spotify exclusive expect for these two episodes.
Sorry you need to help me with the link you provided. I tried skimming it and I just saw that ivermectine showed promise and that due to higher than usual dosage more research is needed.
>Sorry but, by insinuating a smear campaign you are now the one who's spreading bullshit.
Again what bullshit? If we have a drug that shows promise, but as soon as people start talking about it all news agencies start telling how the drug is "a horse dewormer" and implying that only idiots would even consider using "a horse dewormer" on humans when it is literally our best antiparasitic that has been used for decades on humans and animals. Obviously don't take any drugs that are made for animals, but I don't understand why potential treatment was dimissed so hard out of hand at a time when didn't have enough vaccines for everyone in need and we have bunch of Ivermectine in every pharmacy around the world.
> Caly et al. at Monash University in Australia recently published a paper in Antiviral Research, reporting that ivermectin, a medication widely used for the treatment of certain parasitic diseases in humans and livestock animals, inhibits the replication of SARS-CoV-2 in cell culture (Caly et al., 2020). *Despite the authors' cautious conclusion that ivermectin "warrants further investigation for possible benefits in humans,"* the paper has excited widespread interest on medical and veterinary websites, which often incorrectly describe the drug as a treatment or cure for COVID-19. These inappropriate statements led to a warning by the US FDA, that *ivermectin in veterinary products should not be used for human therapy*
The letters and the author of the original paper all seem to be concerned about the dosage being higher than what is used to treat parasites and the amount could potentially be toxic which in their words: "important reason to be very cautious in considering ivermectin as a therapeutic for viral infection in human patients."
Again I ask you to help me with finding the section that says the drug fails to meet criteria for further studies?
EDIT: I tried to highlight the interesting points, but I can't figure it out so I will just put the two quotes here:
1. Despite the authors' cautious conclusion that ivermectin "warrants further investigation for possible benefits in humans,"
2. ivermectin in veterinary products should not be used for human therapy
The blessing and curse of having the worlds information at our fingertips is that we can usually find the data, groups and echo chambers to mirror any narrative.
If you were hesitant about certain medical procedures, you now have access to groups and data that can and will reaffirm that you should not undergo that procedure because of X, Y & Z.
Wether X, Y & Z are directly relevant, or even statistically probable - it doesn’t matter anymore. Group think, peer pressure, societal pressures and desires to be “free” and “independent” etc start to reign.
The backlash against Spotify is warranted - it’s just a large corporation that people can condem and refuse to do business with. Same with governments.
Perhaps not exactly the same analogy, but muslims won’t generally use the services offered by a Church, or some people might go see their Shaman over a GP, or vegans will avoid the meat-heavy BBQ place. We have our beliefs, some are misguided, some are dangerous. Covid is pretty dangerous, and deadly to certain demographics.
An awful lot of people disagree with you very strongly on that point.
I agree but as brown person who is a first generation immigrant and dealt with racism myself, Banning the utterance of a word used in a fairly clinical context draws attention away from actual systematic racism that exists today.
I hate to quote right wingers but this is very much virtue signaling and its dangerous for all te precedents it sets without doing anything that would actually benefit marginalized people.
Is Joe Rogan a bad guy? Who knows. Sounds like he was an idiot a decade or so ago, but maybe he's better now. Is he entitled in any vast cosmic sense to a platform with millions of listeners and an actual effect on politics and the real world? No, not really. He's got one, sure, but it's not like we as a society are in any way obligated to either agree that that should continue or not take steps to see it stopped if we feel it's doing harm. Should Joe Rogan be shot or thrown in jail? Absolutely not. Does he have an inalienable right to a mass influence on society? Also absolutely not.
This sort of notion that we as society don't have some vested interest in the construction of the world we live in that doesn't trump some random person's ability to earn an obscene amount of money is just strange. Joe Rogan isn't going to be poor if he loses his show and he's not going without a meal if Spotify decides he can't say the N-word in a podcast.
If I were a person who was vaccine-hesitant or straight up didn't want the COVID vaccine for whatever reason, all this talk would just make further entrenched in my beliefs. Which is clearly what is happening.
I also am also very much against calling for people's jobs/livelihoods what have you. Regardless of if I agree/disagree with their positions. I do wish Rogan would have just stayed independent, especially because I listen to far fewer of his podcasts because Spotify is a shit platform. But honestly, who would turn down a multihundred million dollar deal. So whatever, I don't blame him. But clearly he is seeing the repercussions of that.
The forbidden fruit effect only gives these sounds more power than they deserve.
I think it went too far when people started to link to Spotify's CEO's physical address on Twitter, it was almost like "Well here is the address, it would be a shame if something happened...".
And any "celebrity" involved in all this, if they think they aren't next on the list, they're deluded...
Honestly I don't get it, I'd love if someone would spell that out for me why someone using the word with extremely obvious lack of malicious intent is vehemently shouted down with the same intensity that actual white supremacists receive.
Actual white supremacists don’t pose any threat to the prevailing system of thought, so mostly get ignored as marginal wackos.
On the other hand, mainstream people who dissent, even in a minor way, pose a serious threat. They challenge orthodoxy in a way that crazy racists don’t. The real danger? People might start listening to them!
That’s why they get shut down harder. It’s about silencing credible dissent.
Actual harm prevention is a distant secondary concern.
It's not an overtly stated narrative and doesn't have to make rational sense, only be emotionally appealing. But it's quite self-consistent in its own terms, and it's ultimately what justifies this kind of outrage.
It's definitely not a just strategy, but it might actually be a fairly effective one.
AS someone who's also in an interracial relationship, I applaud his support and hope my own children benefit from genetic diversity.
Book burning has never led to a socially-uplifting culture. I think being a free speech quasi-absolutist is the only viable position (apart from obvious edge-cases like yelling "fire" in a crowded movie theater, fighting words, etc., which SCOTUS is very careful to delineate).
Folks really need to read some John Stuart Mill. It's a shame to see such vitriolic response to a right our ancestors literally died for.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/02/06...
Quote: Spotify’s chief executive said it was Rogan’s decision to remove episodes of “The Joe Rogan Experience” from the platform following discussions with the company about “some of the content in his show, including his history of using some racially insensitive language.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/02/06...
This is what the “marketplace of ideas” looks like. The evolving tension between different factions and ideas is a feature, not a bug.
When reading books like "The Scarlet Letter" way back in my younger days, I always thought of them as being so irrelevant. Unfortunately, I didn't understand they were actually sci-fi novels. My only consolation now is that perhaps a new crop of Americans eventually emerges that views the moral panics of today with as much exasperation and disdain as I viewed the moral panics of the 1600s.
And to take the metaphor one step further, which may be to go too far, if someone does not want to have their ideas on the same shelves as some other ideas, the best is if the marketplace is big enough that there are other shelves to move to. For example, there are more record companies than there are streaming services. The consolidation that seems inevitable in the Internet era works against a truly diversive market. Traditional bookshops worked much better for this. The convenience that many values, to have everything in one place, has disadvantages too.
Not marketplace like a grocery store where you go shopping.
Weird. I must have missed the historical text about rights and freedoms that compensated for this.
It will be interesting to see how this goes. My hope/wish is that Spotify tells everyone to pound sand, and this trend of mobbing people can begin to end. Or they do the opposite, Rogan goes to some more erm, 'open' platform, and we end up with some weird even more divided internet.
I disagree.
I think that deplatforming Alex Jones is probably a good idea, and deplatforming JRE is probably a bad idea. If I could choose, I'd deplatform one but not the other.
I think that's a perfectly consistent point of view to hold. The line has to be drawn somewhere - but I don't know why it can't be at a nuanced place in between these two.
If employees really can't handle diversity of thought and expression, they should seek new, fresh employees (with hiring filters to screen out intolerant minds).
Today, people don't talk much about "class" but the same ideas have been adapted to race, gender, and other areas that could be viewed as oppressive.
I don't know about Marx, but that sounds closer to a comic book villain than a real person. And skimming through some search results, it looks like he heavily supported freedom of the press.
> Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
The state controlling communications doesn't sound very free speech to me.
> despotic inroads on the rights of property... unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of production.
And for another, he's also said to have said (in "Comments on the Latest Prussian Censorship Instruction"):
> The real, radical cure for the censorship would be its abolition; for the institution itself is a bad one, and institutions are more powerful than people.
That seems pretty unambiguously against censorship.
Have you considered that?
“ In March 2003, the American country band the Dixie Chicks, now known as the Chicks, publicly criticized President George W. Bush and the imminent Allied invasion of Iraq…
After the statement was reported by the British newspaper The Guardian, it led to backlash from American country listeners, who were mostly right-wing and supported the war. The Dixie Chicks were blacklisted by thousands of country radio stations, received death threats, and were criticized by other country musicians. The backlash damaged sales of the Dixie Chicks' music and concert tickets and lost them corporate sponsorship.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixie_Chicks_controversy
I don't think it's the same. DJ's make decisions what to put on air like editors; they express their personal musical and political views, and so does the radio station as a whole. They don't advertise to the listener as if they played all the possible music in the world, but Spotify does. It has curated playlists, of course, but all of it's messaging to the user has an implicit assumption that user will be able to find whatever she wants there, and it won't be expression of Spotify's musical or political views.
The drinks manufacturer Lipton canceled its promotional contract with the Dixie Chicks.[4] Maguire's tour bus driver resigned in protest of their remarks.[11] Maines said: "It seems unfathomable that someone would not want to drive us because of our political views. But we're learning more and more that it's not that unfathomable to a large percentage of the population."[11]”
This is more nuanced than "free speech" vs "dangerous misinformation".
Not their employees' understandable disgust with that decision.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandwagon_effect
"How dare you disrespect Bruce Springsteen! I bet you've never actually sat down and listened to any of his albums."
It's like anything with any other performative figure: an author, a musician, a film maker, or a talk show how host... sometimes a single snippet of their work (as long as it is correctly represented) is all you need to make a make perfectly valid impression.
In Rogan's case -- whether he's a troll or a simpleton (i.e. isn't so much trying to push buttons, but honestly doesn't understand the scientific arguments he's critiquing, or the harm he encourages by doing so) doesn't matter -- not to me, any ways. And I really don't need to invest any more time figuring out whether he has a more "nuanced" side or not. There are literally thousands of "must-see/read/hear" items on my list. Many years overdue.
If you see him in a different light, that's perfectly fine.
I do like Springsteen actually, so we're on the same page there at least.
What I care about is that, as a paying customer who has no interest in podcasts at all, I have a podcast section front and center at the top of my home page with no way of removing it. I'm annoyed that many of these podcasts have pictures that are not safe for work when I try to use Spotify to listen to music at work. I'm annoyed about being automatically opted into pop-up advertisement despite paying for an ad-free experience. I am annoyed about more and more music that is nothing like any of my listening habits being mixed into more and more of my mixes, and later finding out that artists have the option to pay to have their music treated preferentially and inserted into unrelated streams. I'm annoyed that I have music playing regularly that I don't like and I don't want to listen to, but I can't simply tell Spotify to not play it in the future (the official response being "Just listen to more music that you do like, and the AI will learn eventually!")
Spotify was a platform with an ad-supported model and a paid ad-free option, and now it's a platform with an ad-supported model and a slightly-more-subtle ad-supported paid option. Not worth it. A modern music platform having no ability to filter out music you don't want to listen to is unacceptable.
The controversy has a lot to do with what's wrong with Spotify right now (podcast-pushing and chasing more and more ad revenue, treating even their paying customers as nothing more than an advertisement base to leverage for more revenue), but it is a symptom of the ad-revenue chasing greed that's infecting everything right now.
I don't care about Rogan, and I don't think many people who are upset with Spotify do. They care that music doesn't seem to be Spotify's top priority.
What platform is that, and are you really sure?
Every platform that has a free tier has dismal pay per play numbers. But what I care about is how much of my $10 per month the artists and songwriters get. AFAICT it's almost universally 70%. But I'd be happy to be corrected, because I'd be really easy to convert away from Spotify at the moment...
They even have creators Fridays which removes bandcamps chunk of the revenue (15%)
(Even if you check your own experience and think back to times you start music and just let it play for multiple hours, consider that there are people who start one podcast and keep listening through multiple episodes)
This plus threatening to kill the podcast open ecosystem by creating walled gardens is why I can't help but chuckle at the mess Spotify have gotten themselves into. How did no one at Spotify see this coming? By buying an exclusive deal, they are going to be seen as a publisher of content, and not just as a mere platform. Of course people are going to hold them responsible for that content.
Even if you wanted to try Spotify as your main podcast client, some podcasts were never on Spotify because Spotify wouldn't pony up. Others went Spotify exclusive.
I cancelled Spotify and signed up for Apple Music. It's much improved from 2015, especially in terms of discovery and curated playlists. And it supports ALAC, which is a nice bonus (Spotify still has no FLAC option).
I support free speech. I don't support treating your paying customers like an ad audience. "free speech" is a weak justification for scummy business practices.
On a content front, Tidal has 76% of my Spotify liked tracks and 83% of tracks from liked playlists (stats from Soundiiz). That's a not insubstantial amount of music to lose access to.
That might be okay, except nobody comes close to Spotify's recommendations for me. I can count on the overwhelming majority of the "Daily Mix" or "Track Radio" content to be a good fit for me, and to have passable choice in musical moods. By comparison, Tidal gives me poor individual recommendations, and can't keep a consistent atmosphere during a playback session. I'm sure Tidal has great music that Spotify doesn't, but it's not showing that to me.
I like that Tidal has higher-quality playback, gives artists a bigger cut, and has better controls over banning tracks/artists, artist credits, etc. And Tidal's recommendations are pretty far ahead of most other services for me. But I just can't count on turning it on without constantly skipping songs.
Maybe tunemymusic is better than Soundiiz?
I do have pretty pedestrian music tastes though...
That could very well be the difference. I don't know what normal numbers are, but Spotify says I listened to 2,518 artists last year, and I seldom listen to anyone that plays on the radio.
Streaming music services seem heavily geared towards mainstream tastes. That's understandable, but doesn't work well for me personally.
While Facebook employees were busy with their gender neutral bathrooms, China was building Tiktok.
#ally