36 ms·

I agree with JRE leaving YouTube over the censorship but I disagree with him moving exclusively to spotify for following reasons: 1. Spotify was the one who co

I agree with JRE leaving YouTube over the censorship but I disagree with him moving exclusively to spotify for following reasons: 1. Spotify was the one who conspired with Facebook, Apple and Google to ban Alex Jones and others. So if Joe is moving off of YouTube because he doesn't like the censorship, he's not getting anything better with Spotify. 2. Currently, Spotify doesn't have video (except album cover clips which occasionally show up). I prefer JRE's video format instead of audio. Think of Elon smoking weed on video vs on audio - very different. Seems like Spotify might be adding video later in the year but until that happens, we don't know what we will be getting. 3. "Exclusive" deals in the podcast world is bad. Podcasts were supposed to be platform independent audio files. Making things exclusive is going backwards. 4. Spotify is not available in many countries. 5. Spotify's desktop player isn't the best imo. Their web player is only for audio so far, so they need to make major changes.

jhamilton 6y ago
I don't see how 1 is an issue when Alex Jones et al were deliberately spreading hateful misinformation. Aiming to CYA by booting someone off of a private platform and others following suit is not the same thing as "conspiring to censor" someone
- symlinkk 6y ago
  In my opinion your comment is spreading hateful misinformation about YouTube, and I would like for Hacker News to delete it and ban you permanently.
  - vernie 6y ago
    Heh, got 'em. Can I interest you in some brain supplements?
- TheAdamAndChe 6y ago
  Conspire - To join or act together; combine Censor - prohibit or restrict the use of something Yeah, they conspired to censor.
  - tedivm 6y ago
    Come on. Verb (with object) > to agree together, especially secretly, to do something wrong, evil, or illegal. verb (without object) > to plot (something wrong, evil, or illegal). We all know that "conspire" has connotations beyond just to "join or act together", otherwise there would be no difference between "coporate" and "conspire".
    - TheAdamAndChe 6y ago
      The main difference between my definition and yours is the emotion underlying the interpretation. The base definition is the same.
- herostratus101 6y ago
  We only burn the bad books!
  - jaybeeayyy 6y ago
    Alex Jones said trans people murder babies with democrats for their blood...
    - serf 6y ago
      one can be against censorship and against the message being censored. in other words : don't assume those that defend people like Alex Jones are defending his opinions. Many are defending his ability to transmit his message, regardless of the quality of that message, in the interest of preserving that ability for themselves and causes that they support.
      - hobs 6y ago
        Nah, they are using that as a front to push their agenda, because otherwise they'd be super in favor of google and youtube's free speech too, which they are not. Alex Jones isn't legally prohibited from saying lies about Sandy Hook, and the people up in arms defending those hateful lies and saying we should be careful to preserve hateful lies on private platforms are either idiot patsies or purposefully misleading liars(like Alex Jones himself actually.)
        herostratus101 6y ago
        I think you're confusing YouTube's "free speech" with YouTube's ability to censor anything they want. I have no issue with Google uploading YouTube videos or blog posts spreading essentially whatever message the company wants to spread.
    - stOneskull 6y ago
      psychopaths rise to power so i wouldn't be surprised if there is some truth to that. someone once said 'a dumb psychopath is the serial killer, who kills a few people, and is imprisoned. a smart one drops bombs on thousands of people at once and gets paid for it.' something like that anyway.
- Reedx 6y ago
  It's not an issue if you happen to agree this time. Next time you might not. And then it's too late, you've made your bed.
  - mwfunk 6y ago
    That only makes sense if you consider someone like Alex Jones to be “just another person who happens to have different opinions about some things than some other people”. He never got shit from anyone for merely offering unpopular opinions, his history (and present) is much more complicated and fucked up than that. He’s definitely on a short list of people for whom humanity in general is worse off overall for having him in it. Like a negative contributor on a team who just makes work for other people, he’s a negative contributor in many, many ways for all of humanity, and not just from spreading transparent lies and obvious disinformation. He never got in trouble for simply saying something someone else disagreed with, he got in trouble for directly fucking with the lives of victims of horrible tragedies, over and over again.
  - baddox 6y ago
    I don't understand this attitude that we shouldn't say "don't do bad things" because someone else might come along and disagree about which things are bad.
    - unishark 6y ago
      I think you mean "don't say bad things".
  - GoofballJones 6y ago
    What does this even mean? Are you suggesting a private company should be forced to host content they don't want to? Should Fox News be forced to host Rachael Maddow and a Huffpost show? Is Fox News "censoring" Huffpost by not hosting a show on their network?
    - Reedx 6y ago
      No, none of that. This is different. Imagine a public town square. Would you want any company acting as the gatekeeper, deciding what speech is allowed or not in that setting? YouTube, Twitter and a few others are effectively the new town square. I don't think we want to end up in a position where a few corporations are dictating acceptable speech and open debate.
paulgb 6y ago
> Spotify was the one who conspired with Facebook, Apple and Google to ban Alex Jones and others Alex Jones has a right to free speech, but if he's going to claim Sandy Hook was a hoax causing grieving parents to be harassed, nobody owes it to him to give him a platform. He can pay his own hosting fees.
- gkoberger 6y ago
  The “Right to Free Speech” just means the government can’t impede. Nobody is required to give him a platform, though.
  - herostratus101 6y ago
    This is a fairly cheap argument. Presumably the reasons why it's bad for the government to ban speech are also largely applicable to platforms that are almost universally used to discover new viewpoints.
    - CydeWeys 6y ago
      You're free to make that argument and try to get a new law or amendment passed, but the existing laws and Constitution very clearly only apply to government.
      - herostratus101 6y ago
        You're completely missing the point. I'm making an argument about how companies should behave, not how they are legally obligated to. Incidentally, YouTube, Twitter, etc. should be subject to far stricter regulation when they enforce speech codes and don't behave as neutral platforms.
        pengaru 6y ago
        > I'm making an argument about how companies should behave, not how they are legally obligated to. The same can be said of jackasses spouting harmful drivel within the confines of free speech.
lonelappde 6y ago
Spotify gave Joe money for services.
slg 6y ago
Regarding point 1, the article has been updated to reflect that Spotify is holding Rogan to their content policy. This content policy prohibits "Hate Content" [1]. By any mainstream definition that would include Alex Jones and potentially other guests. Some people would even say that applies to Rogan himself for his comments about transgender people. Unless Rogan makes changes to his show or his booking, it is only a matter of time until this becomes a big issue for him and Spotify. [1] - https://artists.spotify.com/faq/music#what-content-is-prohibited-on-spotify https://artists.spotify.com/faq/music#what-content-is-prohib...
- roenxi 6y ago
  > By any mainstream definition... Rogan has millions of downloads month and had at least one presidential candidate appear for an interview. Joe is one of the people who sets the mainstream definition.
  - 2019-nCoV 6y ago
    Alex Jones has been on JRE multiple times in the past. Will he be allowed to return under the Spotify banner?
  - slg 6y ago
    Joe Rogan doesn't move culture by himself. It doesn't matter how many presidential candidates he talks to, he has had multiple guests on his show that have already been kicked off mainstream platforms like Twitter, Youtube, and Facebook. I guarantee there will be controversy for Spotify if Rogan continues to have on this type of guest in the future.
    - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
      There will surely be controversy for Spotify now, given that Rogan has had such guests in the past. I could be overly optimistic, but I would guess that means that people at Spotify have considered the issue and decided they're okay with it. (And I'm sure you know this, but I think we should be explicit about it in this context: Joe Rogan is extraordinarily popular, with JRE being one of the most followed podcasts in the country. He's not some niche voice that Spotify could have failed to do due diligence on or silence without expecting blowback.)
roenxi 6y ago
He can't actually be leaving over censorship because if he was there is no way phrases like "exclusive multi-year" would be thrown around. Once burned twice shy. There might have been some tea-leaf reading involved that YouTube isn't a supportive platform these days but this move is probably linked to obscene amounts of money changing hands.
- pharke 6y ago
  You have to keep in mind that Joe is a comedian first and foremost. Comedians have had the rug pulled out from under them with COVID-19. He's doing what's right for his family at the moment. I fully expect this to come up in one of his next episodes and since he's up front about this stuff it'll probably be summed up as "Sorry you fucks, a man's gotta eat!"
  - LeoNatan25 6y ago
    Rogan makes tens of millions a year with the podcast ad revenue alone. I’ll make an educated guess his family is eating fine.
    - mikeyouse 6y ago
      He has a $5M house in the LA Hills.. I think "doing the right thing for his family" means "buying a vacation home in Jackson Hole" or something by now.. https://www.thetravel.com/joe-rogan-house-bell-canyon-california/ https://www.thetravel.com/joe-rogan-house-bell-canyon-califo...
      - johnvanommen 6y ago
        What the heck. That's quite modest.
        mikeyouse 6y ago
        Hmm.. maybe by certain definitions of the word.. 9,000sq ft. 6 bed/9 bath.. https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/47-Dapplegray-Rd-Bell-Canyon-CA-91307/96075760_zpid/?fullpage=true https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/47-Dapplegray-Rd-Bell-Can...
dqpb 6y ago
He’s almost certainly moving to Spotify because they’re paying him to move.
jamespullar 6y ago
Spotify actually has supported video for a while (https://support.spotify.com/us/using_spotify/features/videos/ https://support.spotify.com/us/using_spotify/features/videos...). However, the feature itself is horribly hidden. I have in the past accidentally come across music videos, but right now can't intentionally find any video content to cite as an example. Edit: Another article discussing Spotify testing video content https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/6/21249389/spotify-video-podcast-test-upload-content-test-youtube https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/6/21249389/spotify-video-pod...
chundicus 6y ago
I don't agree entirely with all these, but I think 3 is the most compelling. It was kind of magical to younger me discovering the interoperability of podcasts and the freedom that granted listeners (and creators too). I've been a big fan of Spotify, but I don't like this recent push to fracture the podcast market with exclusive deals. That being said it does allow some podcasts to exist that might not otherwise. The only examples I can think of is The Besties.
- swinglock 6y ago
  I remember podcasts. Exclusively streamed audio isn't a podcast.
tinodotim 6y ago
> Seems like Spotify might be adding video later in the year but until that happens, we don't know what we will be getting. He stays on YT 'til January 2021. Then Spotify is supposed to have full or more like better (because they already have) video support ready.
tree3 6y ago
Spotify actually has video already, which they used for music videos. Although it seems like they removed it fairly recently.
voz_ 6y ago
Banning Alex Jones is a good thing.
- Helloworldboy 6y ago
  I guess if you like to be babysat by a giant corporation it is
- rs23296008n1 6y ago
  I'm no longer convinced of that. He should be kept in the light where we can see him and respond. Kept in the outer fringe he will operate in a bubble and the others who are attracted to him will also exist in that bubble. This also means no opposing views to pop that bubble. I actually think this is worse for society overall. The more light shining on him to keep him honest the better.
  - iamacyborg 6y ago
    Deplatforming works. https://icct.nl/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/J.-M.-Berger-Making-CVE-Work-A-Focused-Approach-Based-on-Process-Disruption-.pdf https://icct.nl/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/J.-M.-Berger-Maki... https://www.cc.gatech.edu/~eshwar3/uploads/3/8/0/4/38043045/cscw2018-chandrasekharan-reddit2015ban.pdf https://www.cc.gatech.edu/~eshwar3/uploads/3/8/0/4/38043045/...
    - ojilles 6y ago
      Wow, the first link brought up ISIS -- in these Covid 19 times, I have not thought about that/them for some time. The global zeitgeist is a real thing!
  - JimDabell 6y ago
    > He should be kept in the light where we can see him and respond. If you want to publish his content for him, you can go ahead and do that. But don't complain that other people don't want to.
  - seumars 6y ago
GoofballJones 6y ago
Alex Jones being kicked off those services isn't the same thing. He was spreading major misinformation and targeted harassment at innocent people that were involved in a tragedy. He wasn't "conspired" against. They just told him to go host his hate somewhere else. And stop with these "censorship" BS. Alex Jones has every right to start his own network if he wants and put anything on it. There's nothing stopping him from doing it. But there is also zero reason why another private company has to be forced to carry something they don't want to. Free speech doesn't mean everyone is forced to listen to that speech. Why not say that CBS/NBC/ABC/PBS are also "conspiring" against him too because they don't carry his show? OMG, Nickelodeon doesn't carry Alex Jones! They're censoring him! Come on.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- fewfewf 6y ago
  You're really going to delegate censorship decisions to big tech? What's classes as "misinformation" should be our choice as consumers, not theirs. Example: David Icke may be a conspiracy theorist, but banning him is one step closer from Alex Jones towards a censorship nightmare. The slippery slope is 10ft behind and we're cruising down at 100 mph.
  - tyre 6y ago
    No we're not, calm down. Alex Jones is riling people up on conspiracy theories that actively do harm in order to make money. What happens if a private company removes him from their platform? … he can still post on his website? This isn't some Orwellian nightmare. A lot of people are trying to figure out how to balance absolute freedom with building a better collective human society. It's messy! People are messy! And sometimes we make mistakes, even with the best of intentions, even when we make the best choice with the information we have. It's not like they're kicking math off of YouTube. And, no, this isn't one step towards that.
    - tomcam 6y ago
Florin_Andrei 6y ago
> leaving YouTube over the censorship ROTFL Kicking the nutjob out for hateful stuff is "censorship" in Ayn Rand fanfiction, maybe.
dzhiurgis 6y ago
Their web player doesn't even work with desktop Safari...
- gsich 6y ago
  Use another browser. Probably Apple saying "we don't support "obscure" file formats".
  - jmull3n 6y ago
    I believe it's due to the DRM protection Spotify use. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Encrypted_Media_Extensions_API https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Encrypted_M...
    - gsich 6y ago
      Oh, I thought it was the webplayer that the podcast site uses. If that is Spotify, shame on them for DRM.
- armandhammer 6y ago
  Yes it does, I'm using it right now. Safari 13.1; macOS 10.15.4; 2014 MBP. Nothing special here, it just works (though I normally use Brave).
bassman9000 6y ago
Around 0:22 https://newsroom.spotify.com/2020-05-19/the-joe-rogan-experience-launches-exclusive-partnership-with-spotify/ https://newsroom.spotify.com/2020-05-19/the-joe-rogan-experi... Includes video.
emilsedgh 6y ago
> JRE leaving YouTube over the censorship Meh. Youtube is an open platform. You can upload anything to it and there's almost no oversight except for a few sensitive situations, which I'm pretty much sure Google doesn't want to be involved with to begin with, but they have to. That's the price of them staying open for anyone to upload anything. But Spotify is a closed and controlled environment. Not anyone can upload anything they want to it... So in protest against Youtube's censorship he moved to a closed ecosystem where most of the world cannot publish to anyways. That's either a faulty decision making, or trying to get some PR and making it look like a moral stand not just a better deal.
stOneskull 6y ago
it wouldn't be "the exact same show" if there wasn't video. there's no way it'd be audio only.
propogandist 6y ago
keep in mind that spotify mines an incredible amount of data. This is what someone got when they did a GDPR request few years ago, and companies have only gotten more aggressive in the amount of data they're capturing https://twitter.com/steipete/status/1025024813889478656 https://twitter.com/steipete/status/1025024813889478656
- carapace 6y ago
  Ah, shit. That's creepy as hell.
- reedwolf 6y ago
  If you can't trust Swedes with your data, who can you trust?
gsich 6y ago
A podcast is only a podcast if it has RSS.
99_00 6y ago
He is going to Spotify for $100 million. https://www.wsj.com/articles/spotify-strikes-exclusive-podcast-deal-with-joe-rogan-11589913814 https://www.wsj.com/articles/spotify-strikes-exclusive-podca...
ilaksh 6y ago
It's probably well over $100 million dollars. I would love to see you stand on those principles of yours and turn down $100 million dollars.
- rorykoehler 6y ago
  It’s $100m on the dot. JR is already a multi-millionaire. Surely there is a point where money buys you the ability to live by your principles otherwise what’s the point in having principles at all?
camillomiller 6y ago
From what you say it’s as if Joe Rogan is a solipsistic prick with a disproportionate ego who runs a much overrated show and who cares mostly about getting richer and richer...
virvar 6y ago
I always found America’s grips on these things a tad weird. In my country you’re accountable to print the truth, and if you don’t, it comes with fines or even prison time. Because lying to the public is dangerous. That hasn’t stopped opinion pieces, but it has stopped media outlets from printing things like “the earth is flat” or “drinking bleach cures covid”. Unfortunately this is yet to apply to social media stars, but when they have audiences larger than news papers I think they should frankly be under the same laws. Yet in America you seem to put that sort of thing in the same box as Chinese censorship. Which is really just so strange to me. Do you really think you can have a functioning democracy when people live in completely different bubbles of subjective truth?
- aaron695 6y ago
  So you ban churchs? Killed maybe billions over the past 100,000 years. They also provide comfort and help to billions through their lies. Hard to ever know what their total effect has been. But still lies. Or is your religion ok and 'normal', but thinking the world is flat not?
  - alwayseasy 6y ago
    Countries that ask media to print the truth certainly go after religious sects that financially/morally exploit their worshipers. Every time there are threads than mention free speech, it's as if political science and those millennial old problems were new to hn.
  - virvar 6y ago
    We don’t censor fiction.
- MadSudaca 6y ago
  What if your country's government becomes corrupt and starts using its power to enforce "truth" against its citizen's own interests?
  - virvar 6y ago
fuj 6y ago
You lost all credibility by putting alex jones and censorship in the same sentence. You people are so ridiculous, comparing deplatforming racist pseudo science advocates to censorship
sokoloff 6y ago
You list 5 reasons to not choose Spotify. Joe has over 100 million reasons to choose Spotify as his platform. I say "good for him".
danielscrubs 6y ago
5. In regards to number five, at the time Spotify came out I was still using Winamp. The just completely insane thing to me was that I could from a cold start, start the app and listen to a new song in Spotify in noticeably less time than in Winamp where the songs where on my PC! To this day it still perplexes me. Nowadays I think(?) they have switched to a more web-centric GUI-framework and a Server-model, but at that time, Jesus Christ was it impressive on my crappy computer. It was a beast. PS. for a nostalgic trip, anyone remember Foobar?
JSavageOne 6y ago
Great summary of the issues. I'll add that a nice part about having JRE on Youtube is having a comments section. Spotify does not have any kind of comments section. #4 is a pretty big deal to me as I'm in Korea and Spotify is not supported here. I don't use Spotify mainly for that reason. I know I could use a VPN, but that's too much hassle only to listen to JRE (also I'm not aware of any quality free VPNs, and don't care enough to pay for a subscription).

jhamilton 6y ago

I don't see how 1 is an issue when Alex Jones et al were deliberately spreading hateful misinformation. Aiming to CYA by booting someone off of a private platform and others following suit is not the same thing as "conspiring to censor" someone

symlinkk 6y ago
In my opinion your comment is spreading hateful misinformation about YouTube, and I would like for Hacker News to delete it and ban you permanently.
- vernie 6y ago
  Heh, got 'em. Can I interest you in some brain supplements?
TheAdamAndChe 6y ago
Conspire - To join or act together; combine Censor - prohibit or restrict the use of something Yeah, they conspired to censor.
- tedivm 6y ago
  Come on. Verb (with object) > to agree together, especially secretly, to do something wrong, evil, or illegal. verb (without object) > to plot (something wrong, evil, or illegal). We all know that "conspire" has connotations beyond just to "join or act together", otherwise there would be no difference between "coporate" and "conspire".
  - TheAdamAndChe 6y ago
    The main difference between my definition and yours is the emotion underlying the interpretation. The base definition is the same.
herostratus101 6y ago
We only burn the bad books!
- jaybeeayyy 6y ago
  Alex Jones said trans people murder babies with democrats for their blood...
  - serf 6y ago
    one can be against censorship and against the message being censored. in other words : don't assume those that defend people like Alex Jones are defending his opinions. Many are defending his ability to transmit his message, regardless of the quality of that message, in the interest of preserving that ability for themselves and causes that they support.
    - hobs 6y ago
      Nah, they are using that as a front to push their agenda, because otherwise they'd be super in favor of google and youtube's free speech too, which they are not. Alex Jones isn't legally prohibited from saying lies about Sandy Hook, and the people up in arms defending those hateful lies and saying we should be careful to preserve hateful lies on private platforms are either idiot patsies or purposefully misleading liars(like Alex Jones himself actually.)
      - herostratus101 6y ago
        I think you're confusing YouTube's "free speech" with YouTube's ability to censor anything they want. I have no issue with Google uploading YouTube videos or blog posts spreading essentially whatever message the company wants to spread.
  - stOneskull 6y ago
    psychopaths rise to power so i wouldn't be surprised if there is some truth to that. someone once said 'a dumb psychopath is the serial killer, who kills a few people, and is imprisoned. a smart one drops bombs on thousands of people at once and gets paid for it.' something like that anyway.
Reedx 6y ago
It's not an issue if you happen to agree this time. Next time you might not. And then it's too late, you've made your bed.
- mwfunk 6y ago
  That only makes sense if you consider someone like Alex Jones to be “just another person who happens to have different opinions about some things than some other people”. He never got shit from anyone for merely offering unpopular opinions, his history (and present) is much more complicated and fucked up than that. He’s definitely on a short list of people for whom humanity in general is worse off overall for having him in it. Like a negative contributor on a team who just makes work for other people, he’s a negative contributor in many, many ways for all of humanity, and not just from spreading transparent lies and obvious disinformation. He never got in trouble for simply saying something someone else disagreed with, he got in trouble for directly fucking with the lives of victims of horrible tragedies, over and over again.
- baddox 6y ago
  I don't understand this attitude that we shouldn't say "don't do bad things" because someone else might come along and disagree about which things are bad.
  - unishark 6y ago
    I think you mean "don't say bad things".
- GoofballJones 6y ago
  What does this even mean? Are you suggesting a private company should be forced to host content they don't want to? Should Fox News be forced to host Rachael Maddow and a Huffpost show? Is Fox News "censoring" Huffpost by not hosting a show on their network?
  - Reedx 6y ago
    No, none of that. This is different. Imagine a public town square. Would you want any company acting as the gatekeeper, deciding what speech is allowed or not in that setting? YouTube, Twitter and a few others are effectively the new town square. I don't think we want to end up in a position where a few corporations are dictating acceptable speech and open debate.

paulgb 6y ago

> Spotify was the one who conspired with Facebook, Apple and Google to ban Alex Jones and others Alex Jones has a right to free speech, but if he's going to claim Sandy Hook was a hoax causing grieving parents to be harassed, nobody owes it to him to give him a platform. He can pay his own hosting fees.

gkoberger 6y ago
The “Right to Free Speech” just means the government can’t impede. Nobody is required to give him a platform, though.
- herostratus101 6y ago
  This is a fairly cheap argument. Presumably the reasons why it's bad for the government to ban speech are also largely applicable to platforms that are almost universally used to discover new viewpoints.
  - CydeWeys 6y ago
    You're free to make that argument and try to get a new law or amendment passed, but the existing laws and Constitution very clearly only apply to government.
    - herostratus101 6y ago
      You're completely missing the point. I'm making an argument about how companies should behave, not how they are legally obligated to. Incidentally, YouTube, Twitter, etc. should be subject to far stricter regulation when they enforce speech codes and don't behave as neutral platforms.
      - pengaru 6y ago
        > I'm making an argument about how companies should behave, not how they are legally obligated to. The same can be said of jackasses spouting harmful drivel within the confines of free speech.

lonelappde 6y ago

Spotify gave Joe money for services.

slg 6y ago

Regarding point 1, the article has been updated to reflect that Spotify is holding Rogan to their content policy. This content policy prohibits "Hate Content" [1]. By any mainstream definition that would include Alex Jones and potentially other guests. Some people would even say that applies to Rogan himself for his comments about transgender people. Unless Rogan makes changes to his show or his booking, it is only a matter of time until this becomes a big issue for him and Spotify. [1] - https://artists.spotify.com/faq/music#what-content-is-prohibited-on-spotify https://artists.spotify.com/faq/music#what-content-is-prohib...

roenxi 6y ago
> By any mainstream definition... Rogan has millions of downloads month and had at least one presidential candidate appear for an interview. Joe is one of the people who sets the mainstream definition.
- 2019-nCoV 6y ago
  Alex Jones has been on JRE multiple times in the past. Will he be allowed to return under the Spotify banner?
- slg 6y ago
  Joe Rogan doesn't move culture by himself. It doesn't matter how many presidential candidates he talks to, he has had multiple guests on his show that have already been kicked off mainstream platforms like Twitter, Youtube, and Facebook. I guarantee there will be controversy for Spotify if Rogan continues to have on this type of guest in the future.
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    There will surely be controversy for Spotify now, given that Rogan has had such guests in the past. I could be overly optimistic, but I would guess that means that people at Spotify have considered the issue and decided they're okay with it. (And I'm sure you know this, but I think we should be explicit about it in this context: Joe Rogan is extraordinarily popular, with JRE being one of the most followed podcasts in the country. He's not some niche voice that Spotify could have failed to do due diligence on or silence without expecting blowback.)

roenxi 6y ago

He can't actually be leaving over censorship because if he was there is no way phrases like "exclusive multi-year" would be thrown around. Once burned twice shy. There might have been some tea-leaf reading involved that YouTube isn't a supportive platform these days but this move is probably linked to obscene amounts of money changing hands.

pharke 6y ago
You have to keep in mind that Joe is a comedian first and foremost. Comedians have had the rug pulled out from under them with COVID-19. He's doing what's right for his family at the moment. I fully expect this to come up in one of his next episodes and since he's up front about this stuff it'll probably be summed up as "Sorry you fucks, a man's gotta eat!"
- LeoNatan25 6y ago
  Rogan makes tens of millions a year with the podcast ad revenue alone. I’ll make an educated guess his family is eating fine.
  - mikeyouse 6y ago
    He has a $5M house in the LA Hills.. I think "doing the right thing for his family" means "buying a vacation home in Jackson Hole" or something by now.. https://www.thetravel.com/joe-rogan-house-bell-canyon-california/ https://www.thetravel.com/joe-rogan-house-bell-canyon-califo...
    - johnvanommen 6y ago
      What the heck. That's quite modest.
      - mikeyouse 6y ago
        Hmm.. maybe by certain definitions of the word.. 9,000sq ft. 6 bed/9 bath.. https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/47-Dapplegray-Rd-Bell-Canyon-CA-91307/96075760_zpid/?fullpage=true https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/47-Dapplegray-Rd-Bell-Can...

dqpb 6y ago

He’s almost certainly moving to Spotify because they’re paying him to move.

jamespullar 6y ago

Spotify actually has supported video for a while (https://support.spotify.com/us/using_spotify/features/videos/ https://support.spotify.com/us/using_spotify/features/videos...). However, the feature itself is horribly hidden. I have in the past accidentally come across music videos, but right now can't intentionally find any video content to cite as an example. Edit: Another article discussing Spotify testing video content https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/6/21249389/spotify-video-podcast-test-upload-content-test-youtube https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/6/21249389/spotify-video-pod...

chundicus 6y ago

I don't agree entirely with all these, but I think 3 is the most compelling. It was kind of magical to younger me discovering the interoperability of podcasts and the freedom that granted listeners (and creators too). I've been a big fan of Spotify, but I don't like this recent push to fracture the podcast market with exclusive deals. That being said it does allow some podcasts to exist that might not otherwise. The only examples I can think of is The Besties.

swinglock 6y ago
I remember podcasts. Exclusively streamed audio isn't a podcast.

tinodotim 6y ago

> Seems like Spotify might be adding video later in the year but until that happens, we don't know what we will be getting. He stays on YT 'til January 2021. Then Spotify is supposed to have full or more like better (because they already have) video support ready.

tree3 6y ago

Spotify actually has video already, which they used for music videos. Although it seems like they removed it fairly recently.

voz_ 6y ago

Banning Alex Jones is a good thing.

Helloworldboy 6y ago
I guess if you like to be babysat by a giant corporation it is
rs23296008n1 6y ago
I'm no longer convinced of that. He should be kept in the light where we can see him and respond. Kept in the outer fringe he will operate in a bubble and the others who are attracted to him will also exist in that bubble. This also means no opposing views to pop that bubble. I actually think this is worse for society overall. The more light shining on him to keep him honest the better.
- iamacyborg 6y ago
  Deplatforming works. https://icct.nl/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/J.-M.-Berger-Making-CVE-Work-A-Focused-Approach-Based-on-Process-Disruption-.pdf https://icct.nl/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/J.-M.-Berger-Maki... https://www.cc.gatech.edu/~eshwar3/uploads/3/8/0/4/38043045/cscw2018-chandrasekharan-reddit2015ban.pdf https://www.cc.gatech.edu/~eshwar3/uploads/3/8/0/4/38043045/...
  - ojilles 6y ago
    Wow, the first link brought up ISIS -- in these Covid 19 times, I have not thought about that/them for some time. The global zeitgeist is a real thing!
- JimDabell 6y ago
  > He should be kept in the light where we can see him and respond. If you want to publish his content for him, you can go ahead and do that. But don't complain that other people don't want to.
- seumars 6y ago

GoofballJones 6y ago

Alex Jones being kicked off those services isn't the same thing. He was spreading major misinformation and targeted harassment at innocent people that were involved in a tragedy. He wasn't "conspired" against. They just told him to go host his hate somewhere else. And stop with these "censorship" BS. Alex Jones has every right to start his own network if he wants and put anything on it. There's nothing stopping him from doing it. But there is also zero reason why another private company has to be forced to carry something they don't want to. Free speech doesn't mean everyone is forced to listen to that speech. Why not say that CBS/NBC/ABC/PBS are also "conspiring" against him too because they don't carry his show? OMG, Nickelodeon doesn't carry Alex Jones! They're censoring him! Come on.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
fewfewf 6y ago
You're really going to delegate censorship decisions to big tech? What's classes as "misinformation" should be our choice as consumers, not theirs. Example: David Icke may be a conspiracy theorist, but banning him is one step closer from Alex Jones towards a censorship nightmare. The slippery slope is 10ft behind and we're cruising down at 100 mph.
- tyre 6y ago
  No we're not, calm down. Alex Jones is riling people up on conspiracy theories that actively do harm in order to make money. What happens if a private company removes him from their platform? … he can still post on his website? This isn't some Orwellian nightmare. A lot of people are trying to figure out how to balance absolute freedom with building a better collective human society. It's messy! People are messy! And sometimes we make mistakes, even with the best of intentions, even when we make the best choice with the information we have. It's not like they're kicking math off of YouTube. And, no, this isn't one step towards that.
  - tomcam 6y ago

Florin_Andrei 6y ago

> leaving YouTube over the censorship ROTFL Kicking the nutjob out for hateful stuff is "censorship" in Ayn Rand fanfiction, maybe.

dzhiurgis 6y ago

Their web player doesn't even work with desktop Safari...

gsich 6y ago
Use another browser. Probably Apple saying "we don't support "obscure" file formats".
- jmull3n 6y ago
  I believe it's due to the DRM protection Spotify use. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Encrypted_Media_Extensions_API https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Encrypted_M...
  - gsich 6y ago
    Oh, I thought it was the webplayer that the podcast site uses. If that is Spotify, shame on them for DRM.
armandhammer 6y ago
Yes it does, I'm using it right now. Safari 13.1; macOS 10.15.4; 2014 MBP. Nothing special here, it just works (though I normally use Brave).

bassman9000 6y ago

Around 0:22 https://newsroom.spotify.com/2020-05-19/the-joe-rogan-experience-launches-exclusive-partnership-with-spotify/ https://newsroom.spotify.com/2020-05-19/the-joe-rogan-experi... Includes video.

emilsedgh 6y ago

> JRE leaving YouTube over the censorship Meh. Youtube is an open platform. You can upload anything to it and there's almost no oversight except for a few sensitive situations, which I'm pretty much sure Google doesn't want to be involved with to begin with, but they have to. That's the price of them staying open for anyone to upload anything. But Spotify is a closed and controlled environment. Not anyone can upload anything they want to it... So in protest against Youtube's censorship he moved to a closed ecosystem where most of the world cannot publish to anyways. That's either a faulty decision making, or trying to get some PR and making it look like a moral stand not just a better deal.

stOneskull 6y ago

it wouldn't be "the exact same show" if there wasn't video. there's no way it'd be audio only.

propogandist 6y ago

keep in mind that spotify mines an incredible amount of data. This is what someone got when they did a GDPR request few years ago, and companies have only gotten more aggressive in the amount of data they're capturing https://twitter.com/steipete/status/1025024813889478656 https://twitter.com/steipete/status/1025024813889478656

carapace 6y ago
Ah, shit. That's creepy as hell.
reedwolf 6y ago
If you can't trust Swedes with your data, who can you trust?

gsich 6y ago

A podcast is only a podcast if it has RSS.

99_00 6y ago

He is going to Spotify for $100 million. https://www.wsj.com/articles/spotify-strikes-exclusive-podcast-deal-with-joe-rogan-11589913814 https://www.wsj.com/articles/spotify-strikes-exclusive-podca...

ilaksh 6y ago

It's probably well over $100 million dollars. I would love to see you stand on those principles of yours and turn down $100 million dollars.

rorykoehler 6y ago
It’s $100m on the dot. JR is already a multi-millionaire. Surely there is a point where money buys you the ability to live by your principles otherwise what’s the point in having principles at all?

camillomiller 6y ago

From what you say it’s as if Joe Rogan is a solipsistic prick with a disproportionate ego who runs a much overrated show and who cares mostly about getting richer and richer...

virvar 6y ago

I always found America’s grips on these things a tad weird. In my country you’re accountable to print the truth, and if you don’t, it comes with fines or even prison time. Because lying to the public is dangerous. That hasn’t stopped opinion pieces, but it has stopped media outlets from printing things like “the earth is flat” or “drinking bleach cures covid”. Unfortunately this is yet to apply to social media stars, but when they have audiences larger than news papers I think they should frankly be under the same laws. Yet in America you seem to put that sort of thing in the same box as Chinese censorship. Which is really just so strange to me. Do you really think you can have a functioning democracy when people live in completely different bubbles of subjective truth?

aaron695 6y ago
So you ban churchs? Killed maybe billions over the past 100,000 years. They also provide comfort and help to billions through their lies. Hard to ever know what their total effect has been. But still lies. Or is your religion ok and 'normal', but thinking the world is flat not?
- alwayseasy 6y ago
  Countries that ask media to print the truth certainly go after religious sects that financially/morally exploit their worshipers. Every time there are threads than mention free speech, it's as if political science and those millennial old problems were new to hn.
- virvar 6y ago
  We don’t censor fiction.
MadSudaca 6y ago
What if your country's government becomes corrupt and starts using its power to enforce "truth" against its citizen's own interests?
- virvar 6y ago

fuj 6y ago

You lost all credibility by putting alex jones and censorship in the same sentence. You people are so ridiculous, comparing deplatforming racist pseudo science advocates to censorship

sokoloff 6y ago

You list 5 reasons to not choose Spotify. Joe has over 100 million reasons to choose Spotify as his platform. I say "good for him".

danielscrubs 6y ago

5. In regards to number five, at the time Spotify came out I was still using Winamp. The just completely insane thing to me was that I could from a cold start, start the app and listen to a new song in Spotify in noticeably less time than in Winamp where the songs where on my PC! To this day it still perplexes me. Nowadays I think(?) they have switched to a more web-centric GUI-framework and a Server-model, but at that time, Jesus Christ was it impressive on my crappy computer. It was a beast. PS. for a nostalgic trip, anyone remember Foobar?

JSavageOne 6y ago

Great summary of the issues. I'll add that a nice part about having JRE on Youtube is having a comments section. Spotify does not have any kind of comments section. #4 is a pretty big deal to me as I'm in Korea and Spotify is not supported here. I don't use Spotify mainly for that reason. I know I could use a VPN, but that's too much hassle only to listen to JRE (also I'm not aware of any quality free VPNs, and don't care enough to pay for a subscription).