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Who is censoring anyone? Both Neil Young and Joni Mitchell are exercising their freedom to associate with who they like, and expressing the terms by which they

by kdtsh 5y ago

Who is censoring anyone? Both Neil Young and Joni Mitchell are exercising their freedom to associate with who they like, and expressing the terms by which they will associate with businesses like Spotify. I have always found it very telling how people who support free speech change their tune when they stand to lose their platform and audience because other people on those platforms do not wish to associate themselves with them. Would you prefer if artists like Neil Young and Joni Mitchell were forced to keep their content on Spotify even though they don’t agree with their association with Joe Rogan at the present time? - or if not, then what exactly is the problem? Freedom of speech and freedom of association are two sides of the same street. If Joe Rogan is free to say whatever foolish nonsense he wants, as I believe he generally is if he’s not actively harming anyone, then Neil Young and Joni Mitchell (and others) are free to pull their content from the same platform to protest the platform bankrolling him. You should have freedom of speech, but there is no such thing as freedom of a platform for it - if people don’t want to hear it or be associated with it, they don’t have to, and they can withdraw their support (financial, content, etc.) of such platforms. Also - it’s Rockin’ In The Free World, and the song is a biting and cynical satire. I’m not sure how you’re drawing a line between these two things unless you haven’t heard the lyrics before.

erik_seaberg 5y ago
If I don’t like the deal you made with me, fine, I’ll walk away, that’s negotiation. If I don’t like the deal you made with someone else, that’s extortion. It might be legal but it’s unethical. IANAL but it might even be https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tortious_interference#Tortious_interference_with_a_business_relationship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tortious_interference#Tortious....
- archagon 5y ago
  Nope, that is perfectly fine. If I work for you, and you decide to contract with the military, I will walk away from the job. Acceptable by any measure. This situation is largely the same.
- kdtsh 5y ago
  Why is it unethical? Again, the alternative here is that both Young and Mitchell are forced to maintain an association with Spotify against their will, or change their opinion on Rogan (an opinion which many people share and hold to be correct, regardless of whether they believe Rogan should be able to express himself and allow his guests to express themselves in the way he does - and many also do believe he should). Do you consider any of these things to be more just outcomes? No one is being forced to do anything here, there are just two people laying out the conditions under which they continue their relationship with a third party. Neither Young nor Mitchell have actually made any demands here, they have simply stated that they will not continue their relationship with Spotify while they maintain their present relationship with Joe Rogan. Many things can give here - Spotify could drop Rogan, or detail the conditions under which they maintain their relationship, or nothing might happen and Rogan stays on Spotify while Young and Mitchell do not. I don’t know or care about the law here, unless someone starts getting litigious then it’s really all naval gazing nonsense - like you said, you are not a lawyer, so I’m not going to entertain your theories on how this might be illegal. This is purely a matter of values - I value freedom of speech, and I also value people being able to freely associate with who they like, and that includes saying to someone that they will not associate with them while they maintain an association with someone else.
  - erik_seaberg 5y ago
    The principled way to do this is “I’m leaving indefinitely because I don’t approve of your editorial priorities,” not single out one guy and try to bribe or extort the company into breaking their commitments with him. Only customers en masse should be able to demand a change like this, because the company’s duty is to customers rather than competing vendors.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
matthewmacleod 5y ago
It’s completely wild to me that anything other than what you’ve said here would be a common view. Spotify is totally free to bankroll Joe Rogan. Others are equally free to feel that this is a bad decision, to criticise it, and to withdraw support in the form of subscriptions or platform participation because they don’t want to contribute to it. Support for freedom of speech does not come with a requirement to support or share a platform with any particular example of speech. Spotify can make a decision about what has more value to them in the long term. Subscribers and content producers can decide if funding and promoting Rogan is a dealbreaker for them. Thats’s all this comes down to - a business decision. Personally the real crime here is that this has become an issue at all - thanks to Spotify’s frankly desperate attempt to become something other than a music streaming service. I have at no point been interested in Spotify providing podcasts; it’s already an active anti-feature for me, so “now we give some of your subscription to this asshole!!” isn't going to do much than tip me further in the direction of moving to another service.
- kdtsh 5y ago
  This is exactly the way I feel. The best way I heard this described just today was by Anthony Fantano on his Twitch stream, where he said that a music streaming service just shouldn’t be in the news this much. That is spot on in my opinion - too much controversy for nothing. I have never listened to podcasts on Spotify and never will, I use the podcasts app for this and it works quite well for me. I would have been very happy for Spotify to be a music streaming service with a killer app and better support for artists (hell I’d even pay another $5 a month for this, I tried Tidal as I think they pay artists well but I found their app to just not be as good as Spotify’s). As it stands, Joe Rogan makes millions of dollars from his deal with Spotify, while most artists I listen to will probably make pocket money - certainly not nearly enough to make a living, especially during a pandemic when touring is so difficult. Ultimately I think Joe Rogan isn’t going anywhere unless he sees the writing on the wall and decides to take his millions and build his own platform. Frankly, it means nothing to me - I think it would be great if he stopped bringing on guests who routinely lie about the pandemic, but I don’t listen to his podcast so I just don’t care enough to get up in arms about it. But I absolutely reject the idea that this is censorship and I call it out when I can - deplatforming isn’t censorship, and he isn’t even being deplatformed.
cloutchaser 5y ago
I don't think anyone is saying Neil Young or Joni Mitchell shouldn't be allowed to do this. In fact most people on Rogan's side are cheering them on to get their music removed. People are just saying they are hysterical and childish, and it's ironic how these people were the icons of counter culture 30-40 years ago and now are doing the bidding of the powerful. People generally don't like hypocrites, and like to point out hypocrisy. That's all.
- kdtsh 5y ago
  > I don't think anyone is saying Neil Young or Joni Mitchell shouldn't be allowed to do this. The GP of your post says that this censorship. Another person who replied to me earlier said that this is immoral and possibly illegal. So no, there are in fact some people who are saying that Young and Mitchell either should not do this or should not be allowed to do this. > doing the bidding of the powerful. What a silly idea. There is nothing ironic, hysterical, or childish about people who stood against _real_ oppression (the struggles of the Civil Rights movement, conscription into a liar’s war in Vietnam) refusing to associate 50 years later with a business which provides a platform to people telling tales about _fake_ oppression (antivax sentiment, public health measures). Humour me and tell me more about the powerful figures they are doing the bidding of. It’s entirely on you if you think there is any hypocrisy here. Maybe you just don’t understand what values were espoused by (some) people in the 60s counter culture. There are counter cultures and counter cultures, and while the counter culture of today in the USA might be simple contrarianism, the same cannot be said for that of the 60s, and there is no straight line from one to the other.
  - cloutchaser 5y ago
    > Humour me and tell me more about the powerful figures they are doing the bidding of. Let me give you a quote, you can guess who said it. Hint, he also had 3 different views on masks depending on what suited him: “ When polls said only about half of all Americans would take a vaccine, I was saying herd immunity would take 70 to 75 percent. Then, when newer surveys said 60 percent or more would take it, I thought, “I can nudge this up a bit,” so I went to 80, 85.” It takes a special type of ignorance of human nature and history to think that questioning authority is not always something that is important, whether you agree with it or not. I have a lot more respect for liberals like glen greenwald to stand up to authority whoever they are, rather than sing about it for 30 years and then try and shut up someone who’s doing it currently. Btw there’s nothing childish about the 70s counter culture, good for them at the time. What they are doing now is childish and hypocritical.
josephcsible 5y ago
Neil Young tried to censor Joe Rogan by telling Spotify "if you don't kick him off of your platform, then I'm leaving it". Thankfully, Spotify has a spine, so the censorship attempt failed.
- kdtsh 5y ago
  That’s not censorship.
  - choko 5y ago
    You are splitting hairs here, but if you want to be pedantic, it's technically extortion with them aim of getting someone censored.
    - kdtsh 5y ago
      Censorship is the suppression of speech. Neither Neil Young nor Joni Mitchell are advocating for this. ‘Extortion’ is a concept in criminal law. Unless Rogan takes them or Spotify to court, it’s entirely moot whether this is extortion - but he would have a tenuous argument, as neither of them have coerced Spotify to do anything. This isn’t splitting hairs or pedantry. It is simply stating facts. While stating the fact of the matter might not be as trite as the GP of your comment calling it ‘censorship’, it is no less correct.
      - josephcsible 5y ago
        > Censorship is the suppression of speech. Neither Neil Young nor Joni Mitchell are advocating for this. Neil Young and Joni Mitchell both wanted Spotify to suppress Joe Rogan's speech.
      - choko 5y ago
        Extortion: the practice of obtaining something, especially money, through force or threats. Neil Young made a threat to obtain something - the removal of Joe Rogan from Spotify. The term "extortion" isn't limited to criminal law any more than censorship is limited to government action. You are indeed splitting hairs and being pedantic. You are more worried about the exact technical wording (vs common usage and connotation) rather than the actual point of the debate.
slibhb 5y ago
It's not that these people shouldn't be free to leave this or that platform, it's that they shouldn't want to. It's illiberal to refuse association with someone over a disagreement. It's even worse to try to "deplatform" them. If Joni Mitchell wants to spread some message about public health or vaccinations, she can do so without all these histronics. Some other things occur to me: 1. It's not like Joe Rogan owes his audience to Spotify. 2. Rogan is not "alt-right". The people who claim that he is are either lying or have adopted a creepy consequentialist mindset wherein someone is "alt-right" if they act in a way that they believe helps the "alt-right". In the latter case, I'm "alt-right" for writing this post. 3. Nothing Rogan says is ever that extreme. Dumb? Sure. But "young, healthy people don't need to get vaccinated" is not extreme. He's a controversial figure because he's a convenient foil for the legacy media.

by kdtsh 5y ago

erik_seaberg 5y ago

If I don’t like the deal you made with me, fine, I’ll walk away, that’s negotiation. If I don’t like the deal you made with someone else, that’s extortion. It might be legal but it’s unethical. IANAL but it might even be https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tortious_interference#Tortious_interference_with_a_business_relationship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tortious_interference#Tortious....

archagon 5y ago
Nope, that is perfectly fine. If I work for you, and you decide to contract with the military, I will walk away from the job. Acceptable by any measure. This situation is largely the same.
kdtsh 5y ago
Why is it unethical? Again, the alternative here is that both Young and Mitchell are forced to maintain an association with Spotify against their will, or change their opinion on Rogan (an opinion which many people share and hold to be correct, regardless of whether they believe Rogan should be able to express himself and allow his guests to express themselves in the way he does - and many also do believe he should). Do you consider any of these things to be more just outcomes? No one is being forced to do anything here, there are just two people laying out the conditions under which they continue their relationship with a third party. Neither Young nor Mitchell have actually made any demands here, they have simply stated that they will not continue their relationship with Spotify while they maintain their present relationship with Joe Rogan. Many things can give here - Spotify could drop Rogan, or detail the conditions under which they maintain their relationship, or nothing might happen and Rogan stays on Spotify while Young and Mitchell do not. I don’t know or care about the law here, unless someone starts getting litigious then it’s really all naval gazing nonsense - like you said, you are not a lawyer, so I’m not going to entertain your theories on how this might be illegal. This is purely a matter of values - I value freedom of speech, and I also value people being able to freely associate with who they like, and that includes saying to someone that they will not associate with them while they maintain an association with someone else.
- erik_seaberg 5y ago
  The principled way to do this is “I’m leaving indefinitely because I don’t approve of your editorial priorities,” not single out one guy and try to bribe or extort the company into breaking their commitments with him. Only customers en masse should be able to demand a change like this, because the company’s duty is to customers rather than competing vendors.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

matthewmacleod 5y ago

It’s completely wild to me that anything other than what you’ve said here would be a common view. Spotify is totally free to bankroll Joe Rogan. Others are equally free to feel that this is a bad decision, to criticise it, and to withdraw support in the form of subscriptions or platform participation because they don’t want to contribute to it. Support for freedom of speech does not come with a requirement to support or share a platform with any particular example of speech. Spotify can make a decision about what has more value to them in the long term. Subscribers and content producers can decide if funding and promoting Rogan is a dealbreaker for them. Thats’s all this comes down to - a business decision. Personally the real crime here is that this has become an issue at all - thanks to Spotify’s frankly desperate attempt to become something other than a music streaming service. I have at no point been interested in Spotify providing podcasts; it’s already an active anti-feature for me, so “now we give some of your subscription to this asshole!!” isn't going to do much than tip me further in the direction of moving to another service.

kdtsh 5y ago
This is exactly the way I feel. The best way I heard this described just today was by Anthony Fantano on his Twitch stream, where he said that a music streaming service just shouldn’t be in the news this much. That is spot on in my opinion - too much controversy for nothing. I have never listened to podcasts on Spotify and never will, I use the podcasts app for this and it works quite well for me. I would have been very happy for Spotify to be a music streaming service with a killer app and better support for artists (hell I’d even pay another $5 a month for this, I tried Tidal as I think they pay artists well but I found their app to just not be as good as Spotify’s). As it stands, Joe Rogan makes millions of dollars from his deal with Spotify, while most artists I listen to will probably make pocket money - certainly not nearly enough to make a living, especially during a pandemic when touring is so difficult. Ultimately I think Joe Rogan isn’t going anywhere unless he sees the writing on the wall and decides to take his millions and build his own platform. Frankly, it means nothing to me - I think it would be great if he stopped bringing on guests who routinely lie about the pandemic, but I don’t listen to his podcast so I just don’t care enough to get up in arms about it. But I absolutely reject the idea that this is censorship and I call it out when I can - deplatforming isn’t censorship, and he isn’t even being deplatformed.

cloutchaser 5y ago

I don't think anyone is saying Neil Young or Joni Mitchell shouldn't be allowed to do this. In fact most people on Rogan's side are cheering them on to get their music removed. People are just saying they are hysterical and childish, and it's ironic how these people were the icons of counter culture 30-40 years ago and now are doing the bidding of the powerful. People generally don't like hypocrites, and like to point out hypocrisy. That's all.

kdtsh 5y ago
> I don't think anyone is saying Neil Young or Joni Mitchell shouldn't be allowed to do this. The GP of your post says that this censorship. Another person who replied to me earlier said that this is immoral and possibly illegal. So no, there are in fact some people who are saying that Young and Mitchell either should not do this or should not be allowed to do this. > doing the bidding of the powerful. What a silly idea. There is nothing ironic, hysterical, or childish about people who stood against _real_ oppression (the struggles of the Civil Rights movement, conscription into a liar’s war in Vietnam) refusing to associate 50 years later with a business which provides a platform to people telling tales about _fake_ oppression (antivax sentiment, public health measures). Humour me and tell me more about the powerful figures they are doing the bidding of. It’s entirely on you if you think there is any hypocrisy here. Maybe you just don’t understand what values were espoused by (some) people in the 60s counter culture. There are counter cultures and counter cultures, and while the counter culture of today in the USA might be simple contrarianism, the same cannot be said for that of the 60s, and there is no straight line from one to the other.
- cloutchaser 5y ago
  > Humour me and tell me more about the powerful figures they are doing the bidding of. Let me give you a quote, you can guess who said it. Hint, he also had 3 different views on masks depending on what suited him: “ When polls said only about half of all Americans would take a vaccine, I was saying herd immunity would take 70 to 75 percent. Then, when newer surveys said 60 percent or more would take it, I thought, “I can nudge this up a bit,” so I went to 80, 85.” It takes a special type of ignorance of human nature and history to think that questioning authority is not always something that is important, whether you agree with it or not. I have a lot more respect for liberals like glen greenwald to stand up to authority whoever they are, rather than sing about it for 30 years and then try and shut up someone who’s doing it currently. Btw there’s nothing childish about the 70s counter culture, good for them at the time. What they are doing now is childish and hypocritical.

josephcsible 5y ago

Neil Young tried to censor Joe Rogan by telling Spotify "if you don't kick him off of your platform, then I'm leaving it". Thankfully, Spotify has a spine, so the censorship attempt failed.

kdtsh 5y ago
That’s not censorship.
- choko 5y ago
  You are splitting hairs here, but if you want to be pedantic, it's technically extortion with them aim of getting someone censored.
  - kdtsh 5y ago
    Censorship is the suppression of speech. Neither Neil Young nor Joni Mitchell are advocating for this. ‘Extortion’ is a concept in criminal law. Unless Rogan takes them or Spotify to court, it’s entirely moot whether this is extortion - but he would have a tenuous argument, as neither of them have coerced Spotify to do anything. This isn’t splitting hairs or pedantry. It is simply stating facts. While stating the fact of the matter might not be as trite as the GP of your comment calling it ‘censorship’, it is no less correct.
    - josephcsible 5y ago
      > Censorship is the suppression of speech. Neither Neil Young nor Joni Mitchell are advocating for this. Neil Young and Joni Mitchell both wanted Spotify to suppress Joe Rogan's speech.
    - choko 5y ago
      Extortion: the practice of obtaining something, especially money, through force or threats. Neil Young made a threat to obtain something - the removal of Joe Rogan from Spotify. The term "extortion" isn't limited to criminal law any more than censorship is limited to government action. You are indeed splitting hairs and being pedantic. You are more worried about the exact technical wording (vs common usage and connotation) rather than the actual point of the debate.

slibhb 5y ago

It's not that these people shouldn't be free to leave this or that platform, it's that they shouldn't want to. It's illiberal to refuse association with someone over a disagreement. It's even worse to try to "deplatform" them. If Joni Mitchell wants to spread some message about public health or vaccinations, she can do so without all these histronics. Some other things occur to me: 1. It's not like Joe Rogan owes his audience to Spotify. 2. Rogan is not "alt-right". The people who claim that he is are either lying or have adopted a creepy consequentialist mindset wherein someone is "alt-right" if they act in a way that they believe helps the "alt-right". In the latter case, I'm "alt-right" for writing this post. 3. Nothing Rogan says is ever that extreme. Dumb? Sure. But "young, healthy people don't need to get vaccinated" is not extreme. He's a controversial figure because he's a convenient foil for the legacy media.