7 ms·
Spotify not caving under pressure to censor is admirable and important
- exogeny 5y agoI’d say their decision has a lot more to do with not wanting to piss off their $100mm asset than any sort of principled stand.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- petee 5y ago
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- throwaway364747 5y agoWho exactly gets to decide who deserves a soapbox? You and the wolk folk? You realise the list of "health professionals" trying to get Rogan taken down includes non doctor podcasters and dentists right?
- petee 5y ago...along side, say it, actual doctors and actual scientists. Yes, maybe others are also speaking out, as they should. Most yapping about antivax aren't doctors anyway, to match your comparison. Edit - can't reply, so here: Who decides? The people paying for the soapbox. If spotify wants to support it, no one is stopping them, but their customers sure are going to speak out, and take their money elsewhere. Welcome to America.
- throwaway364747 5y agoYou didn't answer my question. Who gets to decide who deserves a soapbox?
- dendriti 5y agoWhy don't you tell us?
- igetspam 5y agoIn this case, the market. This isn't a town square or any other public space. It's private enterprise. If Spotify loses enough revenue from it, they'll probably do a song and dance about ethics and duty to blah blah blah, to justify evicting him. Right now, the math is on the side of Rogan. Maybe it changes. Maybe it doesn't. My money goes elsewhere, when I find content to be too inflammatory.
- josephcsible 5y agoCan you give a non-hypothetical example of something online that is a public space?
- dijonman2 5y agoI will pay money to anyone who resists censorship. I don’t give a fuck if it’s “misinformation“ as those who classify what is right and wrong are a big part of the problem. I worked at a media company and we had a substantial reach and liberal bias. We were a propaganda machine.
- petee 5y agoSo you're ok paying to platform a Nazi group, personally? I know everyone hates the comparison, but they do still exist, and spew filth, though their 1st amendment right to. What about rumor of the pedophile ring out of the pizza joint in Washington? Is it really worth giving large voice to just any old trash, just for 'the cause'? And its not censorship. Its their soapbox, they can do what they want. You can always start your own soap box. Per my example above, you shouldn't have to pay money to support voices that you fundamentally disagree with, nor work for.
- version_five 5y agoGodwin
- petee 5y agoI know, I know :) I couldn't help it
- __blockcipher__ 5y agoCustomers are always free to leave. Nobody is forcing someone to pay for spotify so your argument is absurd on its face.
- toomuchtodo 5y agoI find it difficult to argue for absolute speech freedom when people are dying on ventilators or poisoning their grandchildren with ivermectin from misinformation. “Yelling fire in a crowded theater when there is no fire” sort of thing. There is no expectation or obligation of free speech on a private platform. Censorship arguments ring hollow when outright lies are weaponized and causing measurable, real harm.
- ravenstine 5y agoIn which case the people who disagree with JRE can... simply stop paying for Spotify. But that's not enough. In their ideal world, I would be not allowed to pay for "misinformation" because their position wouldn't be limited to Spotify. Spotify is really just a pointless implementation detail. That's absolutely a fascist attitude. They actually think they and their club know better than everyone else, and their best argument is apparently along the lines of "well you're not a doctor either".
- petee 5y agoI guess the counter argument is, I had Spotify before Joe Rogan was there, I have every right to ask Spotify to get rid of him before I cancel. You are more than welcome to pay for misinformation anywhere else, on someone else's platform, or even start your own, but I'd prefer you do it not in my music app please.
- ravenstine 5y agoNo, that's not the counter argument, because no one is saying that you have no right to ask Spotify to cancel Joe Rogan. People disagree with your position because it's counter to their interests. A group of people is advocating for the removal of voluntarily accessible material because they believe they know better, and many would beg to differ because, guess, what, nobody is infallible or can know everything. > or even start your own [platform], but I'd prefer you do it not in my music app please. That's fine, but that doesn't mean people can't find this philosophy insufferable. If they find it insufferable, that doesn't mean they believe you have no right to be insufferable. They just don't want you to succeed.
- dendriti 5y agoAmericans have managed to drag vaccines into their culture wars. It's one thing to say that vaccines cause autism, or make your sperm into zombie sperm. Stupid, but fundamentally something I can understand. "Wolk [sic] folk" I cannot.
- elil17 5y agoYou know society’s going down hill when not being anti-everybody dying of the horrible virus gets you branded as “wolk folk”
- TameAntelope 5y agoThe people who make soapboxes get to decide, that's how capitalism works. You're not entitled to a soapbox just because you have something to say.
- bagacrap 5y agoUnless your attitude is that people shouldn't be allowed to decide what interests them, it seems Joe Rogan is the most deserving media personality on the planet.
- oceanghost 5y ago
- throwaway364747 5y ago
- petee 5y ago
- version_five 5y agoLol if you read through the comments so far, there's a good argument his was the smartest
- dimator 5y agoWhat if Spotify solved this the same way YouTube and Facebook do: an unskippable message (before and after the podcast) stating where to get actual information about COVID.
- petee 5y agoI think its less effective, since those who want to consume it will still press through, and their 'giant megaphone' has broad reach. Though perhaps some will actually read it
- Ourgon 5y agoHow do you define "actual information about SARS2"? Who makes the definition? This issue has been politicised and polarised so much that "actual information" is hard to come by. Compare the laissez-faire approach of e.g. Sweden with the authoritarian approach in many places in the USA and tell me who was right. Looking at the results the answer should be "Sweden" but that would most likely not be what the "actual information about SARS2" would indicate.
- IronWolve 5y agoBut spotify does censor, they removed a bunch of JRE's podcasts, they removed a bunch of maga/sexual/gore songs. Who knows what other censorship they do, this is just ones I've seen in the news.
- __blockcipher__ 5y agoYeah as an example of the maga censorship they removed songs by Bryson Gray for anti-lgbtq themes I don’t care for his music myself but personally I don’t agree with censorship
- ryaneager 5y agoWhat kind of source is this random tweet?
- version_five 5y agoHes an internet personality. At the time of writing it had 42k likes. I dont know it's appropriate for HN, but it's a computer science "influencer" weighing in
- richardatlarge 5y agoMoving slowly but continuously closer to the point where objectivity and common sense have lost their cultural foundation. That’s the recipe for true anarchy, like it or not. Society has a glue, some think the glue doesn’t matter. When right wingers in the US feel they have more affinity with Russia than mainstream American society, you really have to wonder about the cool aid
- stronglikedan 5y agoSad to see Willie turned into a bully.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- bagacrap 5y agoI don't understand the controversy. So Rogan had a kook or two on the air, kooks with credentials who promoted non-consensus opinions. Is that the problem? I mean, listeners should be able to determine for themselves whether something is believable and/or interesting. I listen to Rogan often and he doesn't directly contradict his guests but you can tell when he's not buying what they're selling. You can also tell he's not the brightest crayon in the box, so you should take what you hear there (and literally everywhere else in the world) with a chunk of salt. It's ludicrous and insulting to say Spotify should be the one deciding what ideas people are allowed to hear as they go about their day and form opinions about the world around them.
- Ourgon 5y agoGuest, not "kook". Why use the term "kook" when all that happened - and hopefully will continue to happen - is that Rogan allowed criticism of the regime by credible sources to be aired. The sources are credible because they have built a reputation on their knowledge in their fields of expertise. As to whether their criticism of the regime is valid is up to the listener to decide, not up to the censor or any (ironically-named) "fact checker". It is certainly not up to media talking heads who just parrot whatever they get fed by the regime and would gladly tell you your country has always been at war with Eurasia.
- bagacrap 5y agoYes, it's up to the listener to judge whether the criticism is valid, and if it's wildly disconnected from my understanding of reality, I label the speaker a kook. I didn't mean to imply the kook label was objective.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- drivingmenuts 5y agoDepends on your perspective, I guess. It would be wrong for Neil Young to say “Remove Joe Rogan from this platform”. But it’s perfectly fine for Neil to say “Remove me from this platform”.