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Spotify competing with YouTube isn't the root problem. The people calling for censorship are the problem. This is the latest attack in an ongoing war on free s
by TrispusAttucks 5y ago
Spotify competing with YouTube isn't the root problem. The people calling for censorship are the problem.
This is the latest attack in an ongoing war on free speech. We are losing our freedoms. Today it's Joe Rogan's speech tomorrow it's yours.
- mulletbum 5y agoJoe Rogan got paid by a company to distribute his content with the right to not distribute any portion they want. If anything, Joe Rogan is giving up his free speech. No one is taking it. Anyone can make a podcast and put it out. Zero stopping them other than maybe money to buy a device to record and send it.
- TrispusAttucks 5y agoBe realistic. YouTube was really the only other platform option for mass distribution at JRE scale.
- s5300 5y agoForget about the magical think called thepiratebay ?
- ViViDboarder 5y agoNo. He could have continued distribution the same way he was prior. He also could have self distributed. He didn’t need a distribution platform because Podcasts don’t require it. Just an RSS feed. He sold out and this is what happens to sellouts.
- jondwillis 5y agoIn my experience, sellouts build penthouses and then have the clout and capital to start buying up the next crop of sellouts.
- rhizome 5y agoMaybe not a penthouse, but... https://www.workandmoney.com/s/joe-rogans-house-austin-texas-dc70658dead7495c https://www.workandmoney.com/s/joe-rogans-house-austin-texas...
- johoho234 5y agoI don't understand why can't he just put his podcasts up on https://www.joerogan.com/ https://www.joerogan.com/ ? Why isn't anyone who think they have something to say that might be bad for business or controversial not just self-publish? It's normal that distributors and publications would be unsure about publishing controversial stuff that could be bad PR and bad for business, so self-publishing seems like the way to go.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- shadowgovt 5y agoFreedom of speech is different from privilege of being advertised.
- enchiridion 5y agoThis argument is so tired. You’re saying they have the right to censor, so say it. The counter argument is that censorship is bad in all its forms. It’s one I and many others support.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- almost_usual 5y agoSo big government needs to dictate how the free market works? Seems very “free”.
- enchiridion 5y agoWhere did I say that? I can personally object to something without invoking the government to action.
- almost_usual 5y agoSo let the shareholders decide what’s best for Spotify.
- enchiridion 5y agoYa sure. But there are literally decision makers who frequent this forum, so if I object to something for sound reasons it’s worth saying so.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- atoav 5y agoSo if the government can force spotify to publish all opinions, why should they not be able to force you to do the same on your blog? In the status quo private people and companies are allowed to not accept contributions on their websites. This is not censorship, this is their right as runners of a plattform. Joe rogan can always go and create his own if he finds that no one wants to publish him. I don't see how enabling the government to force people to publish speech they don't want to say isn't 100% worse than what we have now. It reminds me of stories from the soviet union.
- atoav 5y agoI am not American, I grew up in a country where everything Nazi is very much verboten (Austria, Germany). I was always quite curious about the American insistence on free speech. Today I feel free speech is worse off in the US than it is over here, purely for cultural reasons. Also: I thought the limits on the US idea of free speech was that things like yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theatre would not be covered by free speech. But hasn't the internet created another kind of crowded theatre in which people can yell the online equivalent of "Fire!" to deal substantial damage to society? I think censorship is a slippery slope and I am not at all for it — yet I wonder if what we see here is just the beginning of society figuring out how to deal with free speech in the web. Finding the borders of what can reasonably be allowed, because "everything" proofed to be an unacceptably destructive answer to most.
- egeozcan 5y ago> Also: I thought the limits on the US idea of free speech was that things like yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theatre would not be covered by free speech. But hasn't the internet created another kind of crowded theatre in which people can yell the online equivalent of "Fire!" to deal substantial damage to society? This is a very good point. Many extremists (left and right) are shouting "fascism!" or "communism!" and moving masses of people. The analogy works quite well.
- Taurenking 5y agoToo bad only one side of the analogy gets banned. It's not a very well thought of equivalence when the individual can't even yell "I think there might be a fire" without being censored, because platforms think (and most of the time they're right) that consumers are too stupid.
- egeozcan 5y ago> Too bad only one side of the analogy gets banned. I don't understand what you mean. > when the individual can't even yell "I think there might be a fire" without being censored Um, don't you think they should get banned when there isn't a fire?
- nonethewiser 5y agoIrrelevant in terms of what values should be exemplified. Not to mention you don't know the contract. The only public knowledge about the contract comes from Rogans description orbit, which contradicts what you're saying.
- sofixa 5y ago[flagged]
- MisterMower 5y ago“I'm not saying everyone dissenting from the generally accepted opinions should be fully banned from the Internet or sent to jail” What are you saying, exactly? We just fine them increasing amounts of money until they agree with the “generally accepted opinions?” Who gets to decide what the generally accepted opinions are? How do we even know they’re right? Why does everybody have to agree on everything? Your musings are, quite frankly, childish. People are entitled to their incorrect opinions. If you want to end climate change denialism or anti-vaccine sentiment, discuss the facts with people who sympathize with those viewpoints. Convince them on the evidence. Find better evidence if you can’t. The people like yourself who want to engage in censorship never have the truth on their side. There’d be no reason to censor anything if you did: just lead with the truth instead. Let the facts speak for themselves. The fact that you can’t convince people of your “facts” is proof that you your ideas are garbage. By all means though, continue to push for censorship. It will only increase the skepticism and distrust of the “generally accepted opinions” held by polite society.
- sofixa 5y ago> What are you saying, exactly? We just fine them increasing amounts of money until they agree with the “generally accepted opinions Maybe? Alex Jones still hasn't accepted reality regarding the Sandy Hook massacre, even after losing a trial. Éric Zemmour still peddles blatantly racist and false information after being fined multiple times for it. Is there a way to even stop that kind of person? Anyone listening to them ( and Trump, and Nigel Farage, and Boris Johnson) obviously isn't interested in facts, because everything out of their mouths is easily debunkable with a few minutes online > If you want to end climate change denialism or anti-vaccine sentiment, discuss the facts with people who sympathize with those viewpoints. Convince them on the evidence. Find better evidence if you can’t. That doesn't work and hasn't for years. You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into. > The people like yourself who want to engage in censorship never have the truth on their side. There’d be no reason to censor anything if you did: just lead with the truth instead. Let the facts speak for themselves. The fact that you can’t convince people of your “facts” is proof that you your ideas are garbage. That's an entirely useless personal attack. I never claimed any facts, I'm claiming that people peddling easily debunked bullshit they pass as fact can't be allowed to do this constantly without repercussions. Because they are causing real life harm and using "it's just my opinion, I'm just asking questions" as a shitty excuse.
- aaomidi 5y agoMost people aren't influential and it's easier to keep them busy fighting on Twitter rather than silencing them. So, no one is coming for your speech because you (being everyone here) don't matter enough.
- Moto7451 5y agoThe First Amendment protects us from the government censoring speech. It is not a prohibition on private companies removing content or private citizens demanding the removal of speech they disapprove of. The fact that this discourse can happen in the open is proof that free speech exists and is in force. If the Biden administration could control speech they could ban anyone suggesting anything other than the official position of the government. Clearly this is not happening. Likewise, if the government could control speech they could choose to force Neil Young to place his music back on Spotify for the sake of trade. This is not happening.
- ohCh6zos 5y agoIt is disturb that a least one person in the administration seems to have encouraged this.
- null0pointer 5y agoOnce again we have someone here conflating the first amendement with free speech. Free speech is a principle, the first amendment works in service of it.
- Moto7451 5y agoThe GP’s comment is that “This is the latest attack in an ongoing war on free speech. We are losing our freedoms.” What freedoms can possible be referred to other than the First Amendment? This is the standard language of someone applying the First Amendment to private citizens and companies.
- peteradio 5y agoAre your freedoms only those narrowly carved out in the constitution or do you in fact enjoy many unenumerated freedoms?
- Moto7451 5y agoThis specific conflict is involving Americans and the American arm of Spotify. Those unenumerated freedoms are supported by the laws of the country. If you want to devolve into purely hypotheticals you’re going to find yourself on weak legs because the ultimate argument ends up being that “Joe Rogan speech is denying my freedom from hearing arguments I do not agree with.” These specific issues have been long settled by the rule of law. Being contrarian about this is neither productive or practical. Where does my freedom end and yours begin? If I am infringing on what you feel is your freedom, where is that line? Do I get to play my loud music at 2AM when you have an early morning? Is it ok if you are sleeping in the next day so it doesn’t really matter that I’m keeping you up? When do these ultimate and unlimited unenumerated freedoms fall apart? When they infringe on what society considers to be the normative freedoms we all get to enjoy. Spotify gets to run their private business as they see fit because that is their freedom to do as long as they do not break a law or infringe upon your freedoms. Your perceived freedoms cannot infringe upon their freedoms.
- pschastain 5y agoThis is not an attack on free speech, this is free market economics at work. Spotify is free to promote and profit from whomever they please, and other creative artists are free to take their work elsewhere. Market demand will determine the outcome. The First Amendment states "Congress shall make no law ..."; it says only what the *gov't* can and cannot do
- jdkee 5y agoThe White House openly called for private actors to censor speech. See https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/psaki-big-tech-should-censor-more-misinformation-but-we-believe-in-freedom-of-speech https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/psaki-big-tech-should-c...
- vcgnjxfc444 5y ago
- abofh 5y agoThere is a difference between calling out misinformation and censoring free speech. It's even in the article you posted, biased that it may be. The government is not saying you can't publish misinformation, but that a responsible actor should acknowledge when it's publishing it.
- nostrebored 5y agoMisinformation is a meaningless word. Authorities are wrong all of the time. Misinformation requires belief in a heterodoxy. Heterodoxy is ascientific.
- TearsInTheRain 5y agoYou either believe in free speech or you dont. It shouldn't matter who is infringing on it
- aembleton 5y ago
- flarg 5y agoHow Rogan manages to publish without fact checking and gets away with it amazes me. His free speech is fine, but falsehoods are not.
- stickfigure 5y agoWhatever happened to "the solution to bad speech is more speech"?
- kencausey 5y agoFalsehoods in the right hands can be made much more sexy. Reality is rarely as flexible.
- Applejinx 5y agoMore relevantly, if you've got a motivation to pay handsomely for the falsehoods to be propagated because they serve your purposes, you end up with truth having to compete with heavily subsidized falsehoods. That's a big ask. It's not only about whether the falsehoods (say, National Enquirer type stuff, nonsense that hooks gullible people) are sexy in that they latch onto people's assumptions and fears. It's also about who's paying to keep pumping them out. None of this is organic. A lot of money goes into subsidizing this stuff. Follow the money and you end up with rival countries who actively want to see their enemies harmed, and have arrived at this very effective way of sowing chaos and sabotage. People don't have to be that dumb, if you can flood their zone with crafted information to sway 'em. You just have to hook them and then lead them. You don't have to rely on people being incredibly, organically obtuse if you can play 'em and manipulate them, and that's where social media turned into a superweapon. It was for sale, and not very concerned about who was buying it, or why they were doing it. And here we are.
- tinus_hn 5y agoThat doesn’t really work if your holy speech is merely mediocre. There is a reason people try to lump in any criticism with absolute insanity like the pizzagate conspiracies. They need the contrast to be as big as they can make it, so their story appears better than it is. Because on its own it really isn’t quite good enough.
- johoho234 5y agoWhere do you draw the line between free speech and for-profit propaganda?
- aembleton 5y agoYou don't. For profit propaganda is part of free speech
- MrMan 5y agolet god sort them out right
- johoho234 5y agoThis is something I think you need to unpack, at least if you want to convince me. Prior to the last few years, Propaganda has always been acknowledged as detrimental to society, and a weapon yielded by authoritarian anti-democratic regimes and forces such as Nazism, Fascism, Communism and others. It's nature is to deceive, misled, and discredit the truth, in order to gain political power. It's seen as many as a way to repress speech, by shouting louder and more clearly then the voices of truth. It silences other messages by publishing large content to the contrary as well as direct attacks on the truth to discredit it. From that angle, it seems to me Propaganda itself is a weapon against free speech. In my opinion that means when you have a lot of propaganda in your media and social spheres, you automatically have less free speech. Now I reckon that just having someone censor what they think is propaganda is giving that person, if they were the one behind the propaganda in the first place, all the cards, as they can now promote Propaganda and silence voices against it. And that's not what I'm saying the solution should be, but for me to be satisfied, I need a solution that recognizes both these dimensions. And the solution of just allow all form of propaganda I also see as terrible, it's the second worst one after the other, just let people spread confusion and attacks to the truth in masse is almost as bad as letting them silence the truth. We need something better then that too.
- aembleton 5y ago> We need something better then that too. I agree, but I just can't think what that would be. If you restrict propaganda; then you need to define propaganda. By doing that; you are perpetuating your or someone else's bias which would then be amplified by restricting everyone else from hearing of alternative ideas. To be fair, you covered that; but I don't see how restricting speech does anything else.
- chuckSu 5y ago
- therouwboat 5y agoBut they already came for "us", spotify said they have removed 20k podcasts during pandemic and nobody said anything because it wasn't Joe Rogan.
- rhizome 5y agoWhat's the difference between censorship and editorial policy? If anything, what makes this instance censorship?
- mrweasel 5y agoYes and no. You’re right that to many want to censor everyone they disagree with. In this case, sure Rogan is just an idiot, but he’s honestly allowed to be. Spotifys competition, with Google and other only caused problems because Spotify was dumb enough to pay Joe Rogan $100 million for an exclusive podcast. By doing so they went from just being a platform to having an editiorial responsibility. Had Spotify not paid Joe Rogan, they could have defended their position as “just a platform provider” who shouldn’t interfer with content.
- glogla 5y agoI would sooo love to have my free speech violated the way Joe does: having episodes of talk show I was hired to do for 100 million dollars removed. In fact, I can deal with bunch more free speech violations if I getting enough money that I and my children and my grandchildren will never know need and never have to work days in their lives.
- whatever_dude 5y agoNo, people making millions out of misinformation is the problem. They have learned to appeal to primitive instincts and are making their fortunes out of that. Attempts are curtailing the spread of dangerous misinformation wouldn't happen without the dangerous misinformation first. Rather than being mad for "people calling for censorship", maybe you should be mad for people making a profit of deaths, or the general anti-science, anti-education culture that consumes and amplifies it.
- derbOac 5y agoAll of this surprises me at some level, this cultural tendency toward censorship. It's not even really about whether it's in Spotify, Twitter, YouTube's rights to do it as private companies, it's why do some feel this need to do it at all? Is Joe Rogan really the problem? If you don't like it, don't listen to it. I don't. Someone else framed this in terms of centralized vs decentralized distribution, which brings up a lot of important considerations — if Neil Young or Joni Mitchell would just distribute their songs themselves, they wouldn't have to issue an ultimatum. Likewise, if Rogan did so he wouldn't be the target of censorship. But why isn't Young making that his hill? He doesn't care about freedom of speech, he just wants his ascendant. And Spotify could do what used to seem to me to be common sense, support its artists and drop those calling for restrictions on other artists' works. This is a bad cultural route we're headed down. It doesn't go anywhere well. "Cancel culture" became a sort of buzzy topic of conversation, but it's a real problem and goes deeper than the referent of that catchphrase.
- AmazingTurtle 5y agoYeah I've encountered people that tell me "it's their choice if they leave spotify if rogan wasn't censored" like that wasn't a prime example of cancel culture. The worse thing is that they think they are in the right. Eventually you if you can convince them that its censorship, they will counter that there was nothing wrong with censoring people "[... because of x]". No reason or whatsoever legitimates censorship in my opinion. I also get cancelled on several forums on a regular basis when I say bad things about pharmaceutical companies or against government etc. even if it's completely neutral. I've seen all reasons already to censor me: - insults - conspiracy - talking about controversial topics in general none of those were true, ever..
- MattRix 5y agoIt’s not censorship, nobody is saying he can’t go and do his podcast on his own site. Those artists just don’t want to be associated with him. They don’t want to be earning Spotify money that goes to Rogan. I respect their actions completely. Also “cancel culture” is mostly not a bad thing, it’s more like “consequence culture”. The people who find themselves “cancelled” almost always still end up with large platforms.
- jrochkind1 5y agoI am not as free as Joe Rogan to get paid $100 million by Spotify for doing a podcast. So we don't all seem to have the same amount of "freedom" here. Spotify's arbitrary choices about what content they want to host comes into it, what content they think is good for their business, etc. I don't think Spotify's choice to pay Rogan $100 million but not me is any more or less "censorship" than their choice of what episodes they want to include for that $100 million.
- nonethewiser 5y agoThis is clearly not what freedom is
- jrochkind1 5y agoYou are saying it's clear freedom is not impacted by Spotify choosing who to pay $100 million to, but is equally clear that it's impacted by Spotify choosing what episodes to pay $100 million for? Does freedom require my boss to let me do whatever I want at work too? Or just Rogan? None of that seems as clear to me as it does to you.
- _fizz_buzz_ 5y agoGenerally, there might be cases where I agree with you. But this is very different. Spotify paid Joe Rogan 100 million for the podcast. They (probably) own all the rights to this podcast. If they don't like it anymore they can do whatever they want with it. If I buy a TV and don't like it anymore I can also set it on fire. If you don't want this to happen to your TV, don't sell it to me.