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I don't really understand why anyone who claims to be a proponent of a free market economy has an issue with a private corporation deciding what type of content

• account42 5y ago
  Once you have copyright there no longer is a free market economy. In a true free market economy, anyone who has a copy would be free to distribute those missing episodes and could do so easily since the price of making additional copies is effectively zero. In a reality with copyright your argument needs to take into account the purpose of why there is copyright in the first place. In the US the original purpose of copyright was to incentivize the creation of content and locking up content goes against that.
• CivBase 5y ago
  So basically "If you are a proponent of the free market economy, you shouldn't complain about things a company does as long as they're compliant with the letter of the law." That's an especially rich take considering the controversy is over actions a company is taking specifically to address other peoples' complaints.
• parentheses 5y ago
  I agree with everything you said, but I feel that you're missing the point here. The issue is not _that_ the episodes were deleted. The issue is that social pressure resulted in removal of information from (what is considered by most as) the "public realm". This information comes in the form of "open" (seeming) discussion with people who hold various views. This type of debate and discussion should be encouraged by our society. This stands in stark contrast with the profit motivator that drives those who govern these "public realm"-ish services. This is not a matter of the free market being free, but more that our society is becoming greatly dependent on services that are intrinsically business driven. Those services being seen as the "open forum" that they are not needs to be fixed.
• codeivore 5y ago
  imagine if someone could tell you what you can't not publish on your own website this is the new "freedom of speech" sentiment
  • hnarn 5y ago
    > what you can't not publish Is this double negative intentional? Freedom of speech has never meant the right to force platforms to broadcast your message. Nobody is violating JR’s free speech, Spotify is just acting within the framework of the agreement they made with JR. Whether that involves only the podcast itself or limits on what he can say regarding their interactions, we don’t know because the deal is not public. But nobody forced JR to sign anything, including any potential NDAs.
    • MattPalmer1086 5y ago
      Definitely intentional! Parent is making the point that freedom of speech should not require authorities compelling speech, even though some free speech advocates seem to be going in that direction.
    • treeman79 5y ago
      Platforms are starting to form practical monopolies. Google controls searching for content. If they don’t like the topic you will never be found. They routinely suppress anything on the right. Hosting that can handle load and hackers for normal people is extremely difficult.
      • shadowgovt 5y ago
        > If they don’t like the topic you will never be found That's a hell of a diss for everyone pouring their blood, sweat, and tears into Bing and DDG.
      • codeivore 5y ago
        i have a rack of servers right next to me, i'm not a pro sysadmin just because your average developer today lives and breathes AWS and PaaS doesn't mean it's impossible to use the bare metal
• gunapologist99 5y ago
  It seems to have been a licensing deal, so control reverts to him at the end of the deal. It doesn't sound like he actually "sold" all rights, and he almost certainly only sold certain rights even during the deal. As you say, we'll probably never know all of the details.
• aneil 5y ago
  It was Joe's content to do with as he pleased, and his decision was to sell it and allow someone else to do with it as they pleased. That's simple enough, but it's also simplistic because it assumes that property rights are the only thing we should care about. Which value is more important - property rights (which depend on socialized services like justice and enforcement) or free speech (which thrive by removing regulation)?
  • diego_moita 5y ago
    > Which value is more important - property rights (which depend on socialized services like justice and enforcement) or free speech (which thrive by removing regulation)? Don't ask us, ask J.R.. He remains free to return the 100 million to Spotify and broadcast his stupid crap elsewhere.
    • throwbigdata 5y ago
      I don’t think that’s how contracts work.
      • cnelsenmilt 5y ago
        Uh, it is? A business contract isn't indentured servitude. You can always break a contract. There will be consequences, but they are civil consequences, most likely losing a bunch of money.
  • originalvichy 5y ago
    You should ask Joe that. If Joe decided to sell he 100% had to have known that they will get to choose which parts of his content from the past to distribute until the end of their contract. This is a non-issue.
    • coldtea 5y ago
      Well, that's Joe's non-issue or issue. There's also another issue: the customer wanting to listen to those podcasts and who valued them as part of their Spotify subscription. And that's not due to free market "those didn't were listened to enough, so we took them off" (that wasn't the case, and even if it was storage and distribution costs are negligible anyway, they could still keep them in perpetuity). Instead that customer got shafted because "some" forced Spotify's hand.
• istinetz 5y ago
  I'll try to explain why I have an issue with what is happening here. Yes, I agree with almost everything you said. However, the issue is that platforms are consolidated. Depending on your chosen format of content, there are only 2-3 viable platforms to reach people - and for some types of content, only one. And if those very small number of platforms decide to, or are pressured to, delist content or a content creator, this is bad. Okay, you don't want to call it 'censorship', so lets invent a new term - 'kindacensorship'. Kindacensorship is identical to censorship. It has all the properties of censorship and all the negative effects of censorship. If we had our present day internet infrastructure in the 1950s, there would have been moral outrage at, for example, gay content. And youtube and twitch and reddit would be kindacensoring all gay creators, and all who say that maybe homosexuality isn't so bad, and everything culturally adjacent to these topics. Because the majority demands it. And the majority would have demanded it, because that was the culture of the 1950s. Then, all those gay creators would have been forced off all platforms, all internet infrastructure, and from all types of mainstream media - tv, radio, etc. Yes, they could have still written their thoughts, but it is an absolute guarantee that they'd languish in obscurity, reaching only each other, but not the masses. (If we had our present day internet infrastructure in the 1900s, there would have been moral outrage at people talking about desegragation. Or wanting to abolish the monarchy. Or communism.) Is it not obvious that this would have been bad? Kindacensorship would have stopped dissenters, would have halted the social evolution. And this is exactly what is happening now. The only reason silencing gay people sounds bad, and silencing Joe Rogan sounds good, is because the one message is culturally acceptable, and the other has not yet passed to the Overton window of acceptability. And if we allow kindacensorhip to grow, we will culturally stagnate. All dissenters will be silenced. Kindacensorship is identical to censorship in form, and in function. Who cares that it's not the government banning books, and it's a (very) small cabal of technological companies deciding what can and cannot be said? Is this somehow better? I genuinely don't think it is. And I don't know what I'm proposing, exactly. Not sure I know how I'd renegotiate the social contract. I just know that I'm seeing kindacensorship everywhere and it. is. bad.
  • chasing 5y ago
    Then maybe Joe Rogan shouldn’t have sold his podcast for a large pile of money. Because in doing so he let someone else have control over his speech. If this is a battle you want to fight, I might suggest starting with the book banning efforts by Republicans (the actual government) across many states that’s going on right now.
• IanDrake 5y ago
• michaelcampbell 5y ago
  > I don't really understand why anyone who claims to be a proponent of a free market economy has an issue with a private corporation deciding what type of content they want to broadcast. C'mon, you know these claimants only mean "I want a free market for me".
  • twmiller 5y ago
    This is blatently obvious in America right now. A LOT of voices crying out against the 'cancel culture' are the first to line up when it comes to canceling something THEY don't like.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• klagermkii 5y ago
  > I don't really understand why anyone who claims to be a proponent of a free market economy has an issue with a private corporation deciding what type of content they want to broadcast. I don't think this is some irreconcilable gotcha. I support the free market as a tool when it delivers on the benefits that it can provide. Those are increasing choice and decreasing costs through increased competition and commoditization. If problems show up I'm happy to have legislation introduced to tackle those, such as not allowing food with known toxins to be sold. It's like any tool. I support cars when they're used to deliver on the benefits that they can provide; getting people from point A to point B, and giving them the freedom to move between arbitrary locations. When they're used to run pedestrians over then I don't support that usage, and I will support legislation that limits the use of the tool in that manner. Likewise if the free market is used as a way to reduce the availability of content, I can be against that while still supporting it as a guiding concept.
  • jack_pp 5y ago
    Why are you against people freely negotiating deals even if those deals result in reducing availability of content? Does the govt really need to be involved in this?
    • account42 5y ago
      The government is the only reason those people can reduce the availability of information - they are already involved.
    • User23 5y ago
      Consenting to an immoral deal doesn’t make it moral. As for whether or not reducing the availability of information is immoral, that obviously depends on what the information in question is. I’m unfamiliar with Joe Rogan’s work so I have no opinion on this particular case. Edit: Based on the replies I wasn’t sufficiently clear. I don’t believe the Rogan deal is immoral because I have no belief about it’s morality or lack thereof at all. If you insist on a moral judgment that I feel ill-informed to make, then I’ll speculate that the deal probably was moral.
• zzbzq 5y ago
  I would turn your first sentence around on you. I can't understand how anyone who sees the garbage we're inundated with in all forms of media could be a proponent of an unfettered free market economy. We used to have laws to help ensure we have media we can trust. Then they repealed those laws and we got Fox News... and, incomprehensibly, it got steadily worse from there. The current situation is untenable.
• foogazi 5y ago
  > I don't really understand why anyone who claims to be a proponent of a free market economy has an issue with a private corporation deciding what type of content they want to broadcast. 1. The private corporation “decided” it wanted to broadcast JRE 2. X happened 3. Private corporation decided it didn’t want to broadcast some JRE episodes People are interested to in what X is
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • jakelazaroff 5y ago
    X is the private corporation forecasting that it would lose too much money if it continued broadcasting those episodes. There’s also a step 0, which is the private corporation predicting it would make a lot of money if it could exclusively broadcast Joe Rogan.
    • michael_j_ward 5y ago
      The White House explicitly called on Spotify to take further action against Rogan. Have people not seen this? I don't understand all the meta conversation about free markets when this is cut and dry 1A violation. https://news.yahoo.com/white-house-urges-spotify-further-202312829.html https://news.yahoo.com/white-house-urges-spotify-further-202...
      • ImPostingOnHN 5y ago
        Your hypothesis is that the popular outcry against JR, and the associated potential monetary losses, was not actually the reason Spotify did this. Rather, you believe the action was because the white house said generally that they could do more. Like, that vague statement which didn't even mention episode removal, forced Spotify to do this, not the money. That hypothesis seems unlikely.
        • michael_j_ward 5y ago
• kzrdude 5y ago
  Do intellectual property rights factor into their contract? I would assume not, that JR is still the copyright holder.
• coldtea 5y ago
  >I don't really understand why anyone who claims to be a proponent of a free market economy has an issue with a private corporation deciding what type of content they want to broadcast. Perhaps they have other principles too, not just the free market as the be-all end-all. Not to mention that this isn't the free market operating freely -- it's corporations being told what to do by pressure groups (as opposed to customers of those corporations voting with their wallets, e.g. by not listening to Rogan).
  • adregan 5y ago
    Are you so sure it’s not due to customers voting with their wallets forcing the change? It’s easier than ever to pick up and leave a streaming service. I downloaded all my playlists from Spotify and will move to any other streaming service I want to (one which has Neil Young—whom I enjoy). Who are these “pressure groups?” Are they individual musicians and customers? When do individuals morph into these straw men?
    • CivBase 5y ago
      I doubt this has anything to do with "customers voting with their wallets". I suspect it's due to investors realizing the fragility of Spotify's business model - thanks to some (high profile? ish?) artists abandoning them at the drop of the hat - and selling their stocks, resulting in a huge drop in market value. The company has already been steadily and significantly loosing value for the last year, so it probably didn't take much to convince a lot of investors to bail.
    • coldtea 5y ago
      >Are you so sure it’s not due to customers voting with their wallets forcing the change? It’s easier than ever to pick up and leave a streaming service. I don't think people left Spotify because of Joe Rogan, not in any real numbers anyway (and we can see that next they publish their user statistics). It's a few pundits and musicians making a negative publicity fuss... >Who are these “pressure groups?” Are they individual musicians and customers? When do individuals morph into these straw men? You could have written: "I don't believe there are pressure groups involved, just individual musicians and customers". Instead, you opted to insinuate that I disingenuously created some "straw men" (and thus, am not to be trusted, or whatever). How about the principle of charity, and just making your case, instead on shitting on the person you're discussing with? There were never just some individuals and musicians, but also major media calling for cancelling the show again and again, group petitions such as: https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/covid-misinformation-joe-rogan-spotify-petition-1282240/ https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/covid-misi... and even White House statements addressing the JR issue.
• uejfiweun 5y ago
  I support the right of the company to do what they want, but that doesn't prohibit me from disagreeing with how the exercise that right. I just think their decision to cancel Rogan is ethically and morally wrong, my issue is not with the legality of the move.
  • bwartledorp 5y ago
    So, “canceling” means continuing to afford the canceled party a platform now? I thought you folks were concerned/concern trolling regarding tech deplatforming people wholesale, which is something Spotify has pointedly not done here. If HN flags a single comment I made, am I canceled? What do I do, join Gab for this indignity? Write a polemic about how my rights to use someone else’s platform to share thoughts they don’t want to condone is a grave affront to me, because I have a right to inflict myself on you and you must allow me to do so if you operate technology? It’s really painful to see people draw moral and ethical lines over episodes of a guy bullshitting into a microphone being removed. It’d be nice if your ire and indignation were directed at an issue that would objectively improve the world, like exploitation of children, food inequality and starvation, the actual horrors of tech instead of the ones you’ve attached to, or anything but the plight a millionaire making yet more millions to talk out loud.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    • uejfiweun 5y ago
      I think censorship is morally and ethically wrong, and no amount of left wingers screaming "save the kids" like you is going to change my mind.
      • bwartledorp2 5y ago
        • uejfiweun 5y ago
• kzrdude 5y ago
  I think the most important part here is - does the spotify deal make JR unhappy? Does it make his audience unhappy, and thus himself? For example, if too many episodes are deleted, he will maybe not at all feel the fulfillment and happiness of doing the job he previously enjoyed. That factor ultimately decides if keeping the contract or breaking it is the better solution in the long run. Fans of JR want him to be able to publish what he wants, since it's a proxy for having fulfilling job and successful podcast. Getting paid a lot is a forgettable factor - once that money is already safely streaming in :)
  • gmfawcett 5y ago
    [flagged]
    • kzrdude 5y ago
      I don't get it. Maybe you're assuming things about me that don't make sense? laissez-faire capitalist is not me, at least (but I am a fish that swims in neoliberal infused water unfortunately - i.e. the culture in the western countries).
• drnonsense42 5y ago
  The company began to censor because people complained. Also, the federal government threatened them just days ago (I’m not sure if this sounds like a free market mechanic to me, what do you think?). People are free to call for censorship. People are also free to complain about the censorship. It’s part of the whole free market process. What is the issue here? It sounds like you only like half the coin.
• DeWilde 5y ago
  > JR sold his catalog of intellectual property Not entirely correct, it is a licensing deal, with exclusivity to Spotify. JR is still the owner of the IP, however, it can only be distributed through Spotify. But your point still stands, Spotify chooses what they will distribute, which is okay. My only gripe, in this whole Spotify/Rogan saga, is with the mainstream media that sees Rogan as a threat to their business model so they try to slander him for miss-information, while being greater purveyors of miss-information themselves.
  • emn13 5y ago
    Let me go off on a slight tangent: Should all jokes be taken at face value? Communication is a complex business, and surely what's literal is largely irrelevant; what matters is what is communicated; i.e. what a recipient learns from whatever signals you transmit. JR is deceptive not because every spoken word he says taken in isolation is false, but because the way he frames and presents various sources leads listeners to draw false conclusions. Taking everything he says at face value is no more valid that taking a joke at face value. TL;DR: - "just asking questions" is deceptive; that's not a valid way to learn nor inform. We could discuss in depth how it's deceptive, but that's not really the point - the point is that not all questions will be interpreted literally, so you need to do the same when judging how reasonable that communication is. You have to look holistically at the message listeners will hear.
    • DeWilde 5y ago
      > Communication is a complex business That is an understatement. > JR is deceptive not because everything he says taken in isolation is false I understand at what you are getting at, words at face value don't mean much, context is everything. However, listening to JR I never get a feeling that I'm being intentionally deceived. The falsehoods he believes seem to me to be a genuine lack of awareness on his parts, the fact that he changes opinions when confronted with the fact what he said was bullshit gives me trust that he is not out to deceive me. If he's framing X doctor as best in the field because of Y achievements is because the average Joe would also believe that as well. And the fact that he has corrected some statements made by the past two controversial guests, regarding Covid, is the reason why I trust he's not deceiving with some agenda. Unlike with most mainstream media where I am always trying to figure out the underlying agenda of every statement made from the hosts.
• Mikhail_Edoshin 5y ago
  There were a few Argentine tango orchestras in 1930-40s that were tricked into signing a deal with record companies only, as it turned out, to prevent them from going to a competitor. As a result we don't have any records of these orchestras for the period of the contract, which may be like two years lacunas in their recorded history. There is something deeply wrong with destroying things that haven't yet reached their natural end or not letting them grow, even if one is legally entitled to.
  • d0gsg0w00f 5y ago
    My wife and I have been taking Argentine Tango lessons for about a year now. It took me a long time to understand the mysticism around the "big 4" orchestras but I can say that now I understand and appreciate your comment.
  • burnished 5y ago
    Well, maybe the big difference here is that you have this example where you feel the participants were tricked. I'm inclined to believe you from what little I know of music history. There is zero reason to believe Joe Rogan was in any way tricked or coerced. The situations are materially different.
• ComradePhil 5y ago
  >I don't really understand why anyone who claims to be a proponent of a free market economy has an issue with a private corporation deciding what type of content they want to broadcast. What I don't understand is how this idea comes up every time something like this is discussed. I'm assuming that this does not receive convincing counter-arguments which is why I will attempt to do so here. Almost everyone who believes in free markets (except maybe a very few libertarian anarchists) belives in regulation of the markets to restrict bad actors or unintended harmful side effects to the market or the people in general. Being a proponent of free markets does not mean that you support the idea that market participants can break the laws for the sake of the markets. It also does not mean that one believes the existing laws and regulations are correct and sufficient. Everyone understands that it is an organic process where companies will test the regulations and regulatory bodies have to monitor and act on it constantly. Some of it requires affected people discussing it and making the regulators and market participants know about the bad effects they feel so that something can be done about it, in one way or another. I can imagine there being regulations forcing these content hosting platforms to not be able to take down content unless it is explicitly breaking the law as long as they are being compensated for it with no price discrimination. Similar regulations already apply to a lot of businesses.
  • smus 5y ago
    Can you explain what a regulated free market is? Doesn't the market stop being free once it's regulated?
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  • ImPostingOnHN 5y ago
    > What I don't understand is how this idea comes up every time something like this is discussed. I'm assuming that this does not receive convincing counter-arguments which is why I will attempt to do so here. I believe it's because there has not been a consistently applied general principle of free markets articulated, which the removal of episodes here violates.
• Hermel 5y ago
  Of course they are free to do what they want. But if they do something unethical, like removing content for political reasons, I'm also free to criticize them and for example demand a refund if they lured me into a subscription by claiming I would be able to listen to Joe Rogan. Also, you are making wild assumptions about the contract between Joe Rogan and Spotify. Maybe there's a clause in there that they will not only license his shows, but also make them available to their users? In that case, removing the episodes would be a breach of contract. I hope you understand a little better now.
  • newswasboring 5y ago
    > But if they do something unethical, like removing content for political reasons How is this unethical?
    • influx 5y ago
    • mordymoop 5y ago
      This is a very common question, and understandably so. It can be surprisingly hard to defend a general principle on ethical grounds. Principles are justified by observed regularities. Good principles do not necessarily lead to correct actions in 100% of circumstances. The principle of “don’t interfere with the free exchange of ideas” is one such example where it is particularly hard to see the justification. The consequences of speech suppression are usually subtle —- how do you quantify the impact of a conversation that didn't happen? And at the same time, the consequences of allowing hatespeech or misinformation are usually not subtle, but rather immediate and relatively obvious. I think we’re actually lucky because the Joe Rohan example does contain examples of good justifications. For the past two years, Rogan was openly discussing politically inconvenient inconsistencies, contradictions, and in some cases retroactively apparent lies by the establishment. It is good to know when your leaders are incompetent, when they are lying, or even when they have made a mistake and never taken responsibility for it! It is good that these conversations happened and good that people know this information. But even if we can see that this is good, it’s still one of those abstract good-for-society things that is hard to quantify and hard to weigh against the consequences of its counterfactual non-existence. It is thus almost impossible to balance against the harms of, for example, supporting vaccine skepticism. But that’s not an argument for suppression, merely an acknowledgement that this is hard to think about clearly. But it is a fallacy to say: Joe Rogan’s vaccine skepticism is getting people killed, therefor he should be silenced. The reason is that living in the sort of society that would silence Joe Rogan also gets people killed. The deaths are just abstract deaths. Put it this way: image we get into a war in five years because Rogan and all the other independent voices like him have been successfully soft-pressured into not talking about the downsides, while the mainstream propaganda mouthpieces have been selling the war hard. Thus, we create a concrete terrible outcome because we allowed a culture of speech suppression. Unfortunately, even if that does happen, it will not be obvious that speech suppression led to war, because, again, general principles tend to have more subtle but far-reaching consequences. There are also well-known edge cases where speech suppression is probably obviously the right thing to do. I personally think that the genome for smallpox should never have been published, because try as I might, I can’t imagine a scenario where the harms of suppressing the specific knowledge outweighs the possible (even likely) consequence of its dispersement. You can have a principle while being cognizant that tradeoffs can be valid. Again, though, the reason why free expression is weirdly difficult to defend, is that the harms of “bad” free expression are usually immediate and clear, while the harms of speech suppression are abstract and distant.
• pyuser583 5y ago
  Part of a free market economy is criticizing, and not patronizing, products you don’t like. I’m welcome to say Spotify shouldn’t “censor” (in the corporate media sense) certain speakers. And I can cancel/encourage others to cancel their Spotify subscriptions. And I can keep on using Spotify, but let them know I don’t like their conduct, even though it doesn’t (YET!) make me unsubscribe. All free market.
  • judge2020 5y ago
    Similarly, Spotify can choose to censor speakers if they think people will come back to Spotify/won't leave Spotify as a result of that action. Spotify should definitely censor whatever they need to in the pursuit of maximum profits.
    • hagy 5y ago
      While I agree in principle with this line of thinking, I do worry that this will just lead to platform fragmentation. My thinking is that if Spotify (or any other platform) gives in to one online mob then that will only encourage more future mobs. I imagine that there are numerous podcasts and artists that some group finds objectionable. E.g., I imagine many cultural conservative prudes find music with a lot of profanity to offend their sensibilities. Should Spotify start removing artists if such a mob forms and demands such an action? The end result is that a content distribution platform will have to curate a specific brand that targets specific consumers and only distributes conforming content. Whereas we currently have a half dozen or so music streaming services that all have roughly the same content, we’ll soon find content fragmented across 20 different platforms; each corresponding to a specific slice of consumer preferences. Many of us will have to subscribe to multiple services to get the content we seek and will not be able to mix content. E.g., many of my current playlists on Spotify would be split across several disjoint streaming platforms. Instead, I think platforms should never be reactive in calls for dropping content. Instead they should have a general principle of broadly distributing all but the most extreme fringe content. They can regularly update their principles used in determining what content they distribute, but that should never be done as a quick reaction to some mob. Otherwise they’ll constantly be facing a series of outraged customers that want the platform to stop distributing some content that those outraged user’s don’t even consume. And I believe that will only result in platform fragmentation as distributors curate a brand around specific segments of consumers.
• naasking 5y ago
  It is censorship by definition. Whether you think it's justified is a separate question.
  • FabHK 5y ago
    That is debatable. Many would argue that censorship "by definition" involves the government (not the case here), and not merely the removal of content by someone, but prohibition for everyone to distribute it (not the case here as far as I can tell).
    • naasking 5y ago
      It literally satisfies the definition of censorship of three dictionaries I checked. Government censorship is the most egregious type we should all fear, but it's not the only type.
    • gregors 5y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_censorship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_censorship Corporate censorship is a well understood form. Example - A news station refusing to publish stories that involves their parent or a sibling company is a common one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_censorship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_censorship Religious censorship is another well understood form. If you're saying "political censorship" is the only form of censorship that matters - it's debatable in the same way flat earth arguments are debatable.
      • gregors 5y ago
        Follow up clarification: If your argument is "corporate censorship is benign when compared to political censorship" then I concede that is very debatable indeed.
    • choward 5y ago
      > Many would argue that censorship "by definition" involves the government (not the case here) This does involve the government though. They literally called on Spotify to censor Rogan.
• mercy_dude 5y ago
  The problem is not that private companies doing whatever they wish to do with his content. Spotify in normal times would have no incentives to delete those episodes. It seems the governments in US are enforcing censorship through private sector in the name of disinformation. I urge you to see the recent comments from White House press secy, congressional hearings and so on who insist private sector do more of the dirty work of censorship for them because they don’t like certain point of views. They know they can’t pass a bill that can stand the ground of taking out those contents without standing constitutional challenges.
  • strofcon 5y ago
    I'm very confused as to how you think the government is involved with this issue. Is Neil Young a government official? Or is it empirically false to claim that Joe Rogan is actively peddling false information that is directly impacting people by way of, ya know, dying? I think this is a simple example of the people with wallets using said wallets to indicate what they will and won't tolerate.
    • istorical 5y ago
      "White House urges Spotify to take further action on Joe Rogan: ‘More can be done’" "White House press secretary Jen Psaki called on music and podcast streaming giant Spotify to do “more” in the fight against Covid-19 misinformation on Tuesday. At her daily press briefing, President Joe Biden’s top spokeswoman was asked about a decision by the company to add disclaimers linking to Covid-19 information hubs to any piece of content that includes discussion of the pandemic, vaccines, or Covid-19 itself. She responded that the change was a good step, but that the company could take steps (if it wanted) to actively prohibit content that contained misinformation that experts have warned is prolonging the pandemic and leading to more deaths." https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/joe-rogan-spotify-covid-white-house-b2005488.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
• christophilus 5y ago
  I agree. I’m a free market, free speech guy, and I have no problem with companies doing whatever they want with their content. There are fortunately plenty of places to get podcasts, and there are plenty of podcasts. If you want to dig into any issue, you can do so on the free and open internet. May it ever be so.
• aenis 5y ago
  Precisely. If one pays me $100 to not say "cucumber" today, thats not censorship. If one tells me not to say "heil hitler!" at their garden party, thats also not censorship. Surely there are other garden parties where such statements are welcome - Or I am free to throw my own. Now, if I can't say "cucumber" at all, in any context, whether I entered in any agreement or not - thats censorship.
• hedora 5y ago
  I think the real issue isn't that people are calling for censorship. They're calling for Spotify to not pay people to produce political propaganda. Now, we get the worst of both worlds, where Spotify funds the production of harmful propaganda (by their own published standards), and also starts censoring independently produced content.
  • nradov 5y ago
    What specifically is the harmful political propaganda? Please provide direct quotes in context so that we can understand whether your complaint is valid.
    • ImPostingOnHN 5y ago
      Before they do that, can you clarify who you believe should subsequently judge the validity?
      • nradov 5y ago
        Everyone can judge for themselves.
        • RupertHandjob 5y ago
          HN should remove your posts, because I don't agree with you. Case closed.
    • hedora 5y ago
      Spotify recently published their criteria, and they also said the Joe Rogan content they're funding violated it. My criteria don't matter, and Spotify's criteria have no bearing on the statement I made.
      • nradov 5y ago
        You're not making any sense. The Spotify Platform Rules don't mention anything about "political propaganda" or "harmful propaganda", as per your original comment above. So what was your point exactly? https://newsroom.spotify.com/2022-01-30/spotify-platform-rules/ https://newsroom.spotify.com/2022-01-30/spotify-platform-rul...
• dionian 5y ago
  I don't think it's illegal, i just think it's unamerican
• kova12 5y ago
  There is a concept that we don't interfere with each others lives. If someone has views you don't like, and he never forces them on you, you gotta let it go. For example, a bunch of people chose Jesus, and an other bunch chose Mohammed. Long standing tradition so far was to accept this, and let it go, because alternative is a literal war. Violence. Nobody wants violence, so there are even laws that make it illegal to deny service because of one's religion. And it's not a little deal, for religious person it's about eternal life, so someone believing in wrong god is hugely offensive. Coming back to Spotify, there are a bunch of people who hold beliefs which are considered incorrect, and they are being marginalized and excluded from all avenues to express themselves. It's not Spotify, it's Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and pretty much everything else. When it's a single business that decides to exclude Christians, it's one story, but when it's an organized campaign, then we have a problem, because there will be war
  • tssva 5y ago
    "For example, a bunch of people chose Jesus, and an other bunch chose Mohammed. Long standing tradition so far was to accept this, and let it go, because alternative is a literal war." The long-standing tradition has been war. The long-standing tradition has been war even among those that made the same choice but think that means something slightly different.
• winternett 5y ago
  If records of what people did and said are conveniently deleted from history, no one can be held accountable for what they say and do. The ideal that companies can do whatever they want is far too short sighted. The modern world is so stuck on a rigid definition of freedoms that conveniently changes when it doesn't serve the perspective it is being "preached" from. Platforms are contracted by their users, they are not simply homeowners with private property. Too many companies these days get away with code and content changes without proper accountability, and things are regularly hidden to cover tracks... It's making the Internet very toxic now, and the blanket statements don't apply any more, people should always be held accountable for what they do and say in the course of making money at all levels, that's the only real thing protecting us from becoming slaves to corporate interests.
  • nradov 5y ago
    Should I be prevented from deleting old social media posts if I no longer want to share that content with my followers?
    • toxik 5y ago
      If you’re a public figure, yes.
      • robotresearcher 5y ago
        Why? And who determines that set of people?
• hk1337 5y ago
  > I don't really understand why anyone who claims to be a proponent of a free market economy has an issue with a private corporation deciding what type of content they want to broadcast. You can but it needs to be handled through the free market. One shouldn't be asking any government to step in and make some person or company do something.
• chmod600 5y ago
  When you say "free market" you imply that there is zero political risk (meaning risk of politicians using their elevated powers against you) resulting from their choices. In reality there is political risk for highly public decisions. Politicians do have power. They can call you before Congress under oath without any evidence of legal wrongdoing by anyone. They can start costly antitrust investigations. They can start costly audits. Anywhere along the way, if you make the slightest misstep (or even if you don't), they accuse you of perjury or lying to a federal official or obstruction of justice. Or maybe they just don't "protect" you as well as they might from various unfortunate events. Moreover, there's a pattern of governments harnessing the power of private companies to various purposes through this kind of coercion. If you are a CEO with a comfortable life do you really want to test the ideal that it can't happen in the U.S.?
• marcosdumay 5y ago
  You mean why free market proponents are disturbed by a consequence of copyright law?
• outside1234 5y ago
  I actually don’t have a problem with Spotify deciding they want to pay $100M for this content. I just don’t want to support it. So I moved to Apple Music.
• throwaway73838 5y ago
  Yeah, it’s their free will to censor the content that they deliver. It’s also the consumers free will to have a problem with it. I don’t think anyone here is advocating for a legislative solution to this dispute. Spotify is making a financial/business decision, and the consumers are concerned with the product they are paying for.
  • klyrs 5y ago
    > I don’t think anyone here is advocating for a legislative solution to this dispute. Not this dispute, per se, but I do advocate for a legislative solution to this whole situation: break them up. Recently posted to HN: https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/mergers-ruin-everything https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/mergers-ruin-everything
    • throwaway73838 5y ago
      I don’t understand. Break up Spotify?
• kaashif 5y ago
  > I don't really understand why anyone who claims to be a proponent of a free market economy has an issue with a private corporation deciding what type of content they want to broadcast. You don't understand why someone would want to have all episodes of their favourite podcast available in one place? Just because someone supports the free market doesn't mean they don't have preferences. Support of the free market just means that one wants buyers and sellers to be able to transact without coercion, it doesn't imply any specific opinion about the practices of a company. I don't like bad products and don't want companies to do stuff like this. I don't particularly care about Joe Rogan, but I've had a hell of a time finding episodes of various TV shows that have had episodes removed (Community, South Park, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia) from services, and eventually I just end up pirating that episode. I don't think what Spotify's doing should be illegal but that doesn't mean I have to like it or that I can't say they're making their product worse. If you are referring to people who want Spotify to be forced to do things by law, like keep episodes up (which would be bizarre), then I'm against that too.
  • hnarn 5y ago
    > You don't understand why someone would want to have all episodes of their favourite podcast available in one place? I understand that perfectly well. I don't understand why Spotify would be obligated to serve that need, or indeed serve any content they own that they do not want to serve.
• skybrian 5y ago
  I don't think we even know that it's $100 million. It's a multi-year deal up to that much, according to the Wall Street Journal's anonymous source.
• Ekaros 5y ago
  Perhaps you can support both free markets and absolutely free speech. Something that free market players should strive towards. Then again supporting free market leads to many other unethical things than censorship. Like slavery, why shouldn't you be able to sell some person or yourself to slavery? That is entirely in accord of free markets.
• Natsu 5y ago
  > I don't really understand why anyone who claims to be a proponent of a free market economy has an issue with a private corporation deciding what type of content they want to broadcast. People support the free market because they like freedom. People conspiring to deplatform legal content cuts against that freedom. And they see arguments like this one as rhetorical tricks to get them to disarm and be colonized. This is just the GPL vs. BSD wars all over again, with people claiming that freedom only means BSD-style and not worrying about the freedom-preserving aspects of the GPL and that if you're pro-GPL you're anti-freedom.
• amelius 5y ago
  > I don't really understand why anyone who claims to be a proponent of a free market economy has an issue with a private corporation deciding (...) As a proponent of Net Neutrality, I recognize that there are instances where corporations should not have the last say in any matter. A free market with unbounded rights for corporations is not a good idea.
  • hnarn 5y ago
    > As a proponent of Net Neutrality, I recognize that there are instances where corporations should not have the last say in any matter. Since when did the term net neutrality change from meaning "a free and open internet on equal terms" to "expropriating platforms that refuse to show things I want to see"?
• beaned 5y ago
  I don't think there is any conflict here, people aren't criticizing how the free market works, they're criticizing Spotify for what they see as caving. The "free market" allows companies to do whatever they want with their IP, and it also allows people who are unhappy with that company's actions to criticize them. There's nothing that's not "free market" about that. If you are trying to make the distinction that "censorship" is a term with a specific definition that applies to government censorship, I don't think people really disagree with that either, they're just using the phrase loosely because nobody's provided a better concept to apply. Call it corpo-sensorship, or corpoship, or whatever, but until there's a better word people will just keep using the more digestible one in a lazy way.
• hurril 5y ago
  You're conflating whether or not a private entity is free to do something with whether or not I agree with the soundness of that action. They are distinct.
• steelstraw 5y ago
  You're getting caught in the weeds and missing what's actually happening. It's not just about Spotify and Joe Rogan. If Spotify dropped Rogan and he goes elsewhere, people will still be trying to silence him. If Rogan is silenced, the mob isn't going to suddenly drop their pitchforks and go home. The corporate media isn't going to stop attacking independent media. This is a larger cultural question and will determine where we go from here. Are we still a society that values free expression and open debate?
  • firmnoodle 5y ago
    This is exactly my concern for today's content and it puts us in a place where future content is at risk. Removing select episodes of sitcoms because they aren't politically correct means current shows self censor before creation. Removing back episodes of podcasts can cause a chilling effect on newer content and new creators. There is additional concern when the government is encouraging private companies to silence content. We need to decide if we want to live in a monoculture of thought pushed down from the political leaders or if we want to live in a diverse culture of thoughts and ideas pushed up from the individuals.
  • mola 5y ago
    You discount the damage trolls like Rogan et al did to the tolerance needed to make free speech a possibility. We have these media trolls just spewing provocative nonsense, finding any open wound in our discourse and throw salt on it so they can have their lols, dollars, and influence. How can you be surprise when free speech is finding it's boundaries. This is not even a partisan thing, I do believe exploitative media that feeds on strife is very good business and thus it finds its audience, whether it's left or right. Catering to the different psychologies and fears while maximizing profits.
• edwnj 5y ago
  [flagged]
• cush 5y ago
  It can be both censorship and exercising intellectual property rights. Only buying something to burn it is obviously censorship. A legal monetary transaction can be a means to censorship
• flotzam 5y ago
  > I don't really understand why anyone who claims to be a proponent of a free market economy has an issue with a private corporation deciding what type of content they want to broadcast. Left-wing market anarchists (e.g. the C4SS) would respond that anything involving "intellectual property" is an inherently unfree market that unjustly upholds monopolies on artificially scarce immaterial goods through the threat of state violence.
• logicalmonster 5y ago
  > I don't really understand why anyone who claims to be a proponent of a free market economy has an issue with a private corporation deciding what type of content they want to broadcast. I don't know if this is your opinion or not, but in general, this argument might hold more water if "activists" weren't gleefully trying to shut down relatively free-speech sites like Gab and Parler and others. You can't have it both ways and claim that business can allow whatever content they want and then try and shut down businesses who do just that.
  • hatware 5y ago
    Having it both ways is the definition of the last two years. It's very clear where the bias lies. I am worried.
• LudwigNagasena 5y ago
  >I don't really understand why anyone who claims to be a proponent of a free market economy has an issue with a private corporation deciding what type of content they want to broadcast. Not everyone who supports free markets is a market fundamentalist. It is not hard to understand that people may support free markets for most goods but oppose them for healthcare, education, senate seats and slaves. Do you really have a hard time understanding that? >Exactly what he sold (NDA, limitations on his speech in his free time etc.) we'll probably never know, but whoever calls this "censorship" needs a reality check. Censorship is the suppression of information. You may consider it good, you may consider it bad; it may be done by public institutions, it may be done by private institutions. NDAs are literally a form of censorship. I am not sure what you even mean by censorship if you think that isn't censorship.
• eej71 5y ago
  I do agree with your underlying defense of private property. Spotify has a legal right to do this. There is no contractural issue here. And this is not censorship. But there is a cultural question that I think this defense sidesteps a bit. I'd frame it as a question. What level of heterodox opinion would you encourage Spotify (and the like) to tolerate? What opinion would be heterodox to you or your peers that you'd want to see Spotify to defend as the realm of reasonable on a platform of broad interest to the general public?
  • jupp0r 5y ago
    Not sure whether your question was rhetorical but here is a suggestion anyway: Draw the line where people spread lies or harass others so that actual harm gets done in the real world. Alex Jones got deplatformed after some of his fans were threatening grieving Sand Hooks families. Joe Rogans episodes were removed after they spread misinformation that convinces people to not get vaccinated in the middle of a pandemic, which will probably cause some deaths given how many people listen to his content.
    • eej71 5y ago
      This sounds good at first, but I think it wears differently if you try to apply it to something in a different political quadrant. Consider in the summer of 2020 there was a popular social movement that had quite a presence on social media that was spreading incorrect and ultimately very harmful statistics about police violence. Arguably, this led to wide spread riots, large scale property destruction in multiple cities and ultimately an increase in crime. I think if a vocal minority bullied large corporations to effectively deplatform those social justice organizations then I think many people would be playing a different tune.
      • jupp0r 5y ago
        I don’t think it’s wearing differently. Inciting violence - be it from the left or from the right - is forbidden o most platforms. I agree with you that in reality there would be bigger backlash if this was applied to the left than the right.
• kyrra 5y ago
  I recommend reading Glenn Greenwalds piece on censorship: https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-pressure-campaign-on-spotify https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-pressure-campaign-on-sp... I believe the core issue here is: while the first amendment applies to government, it is something that businesses should try to make a core part of their ethos. The censorship that tech companies have been doing are really against free speech and freedom of association. Yes, companies are within their legal right to do the censorship we are seeing. That doesn't mean it's right.
  • Handytinge 5y ago
    "American argues Swedish company should employ American laws in their ethos"
• throwawaysea 5y ago
  I can be a proponent of free markets and against constructs that are anti competitive. When products are bundled (like with Microsoft’s Office subscriptions or Spotify), or when products have network effects (Facebook, YouTube, Twitter), or when they have a large number of users, or a large market cap, the free market already no longer exists. Choice becomes limited and barriers to entry become higher. These companies’ products start to become as important and influential as any public space or service. That’s where regulation is needed. And with all of the big tech platforms, they need to be regulated to not allow users to be denied or discriminated against due to their political views. The alternative is they are split up. But the free market definitely doesn’t exist right now. Take a look at what happened with Parler. It was a rare successful challenger, although small by comparison, to big social media. Then AOC pressured a few companies to ban Parler and they all complied - whether to build favor with legislators that might regulate them or because it aligned with their politics. The claim that people can just build their own platform doesn’t work in a market this distorted. As for your redefinition of censorship - I disagree. Legal or contractual allowance doesn’t change what it is. This is censorship.
• throwthere 5y ago
  Quite to the contrary, intellectual property rights are hotly debated in free market economies and granted by the government. For the most part people aren’t 100% free market or 100% communism/whatever anyway.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• himinlomax 5y ago
  Just because you are free to do something does not mean it's always a good idea to do it, and just because I support your right to do that thing does not mean that I should refrain from letting you know how I feel about it.
• branon 5y ago
  I don't disagree with you, but legally purchasing the intellectual property rights to a work, and the proceeding to hide it from the public is still censorship in my book. It might not be quite as wrong or bad as, say, state-sponsored blanket censorship, but I think we should call it what it is. A work was available and now it's not. The only reason being that an entity decided that it should be removed from view. Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information[0]. Here, information has been suppressed, thus, censored. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship
  • spac 5y ago
    How do you call the opposite phenomenon in which a company is forced to continue engaging in money-losing activities because of interests external to the company (in this case, the interest in not making Joe Rogan episodes unavailable)?
    • kolbe 5y ago
      I find it hard to believe this is a net gain to Spotify in the long run. It may well have been legal, but Rogan signed on as exclusive to Spotify with the understanding that they would be a platform for him and allow him to further extend his brand and reach his followers. Spotify is still in the early stages of their plan to curate and improve advertising in the podcast space, and their plan is to sign exclusives, forcing listeners onto their platform where the free tier can now have targeted ads as opposed to traditional podcasting with traditional media style ads. Now anyone who receives an offer like this from Spotify will have to consider the possibility of having their brand censored. This will either drive up the cost to Spotify or simply make content providers refuse all together. So, unless Spotify has decided to quit this business plan, I don’t think this is a good long-term solution. I do think what happened is Spotify saw its DAUs and subscribers dipping, and after the bloodbath in $FB stock last week, got freaked out and abandoned a long-term business plan to prevent a dip in users this quarter.
    • christophilus 5y ago
      I’m not sure what you’d call that. But standing up to an angry mob is called “spine”— something Spotify seems to lack. The only JR podcast I listened to was the Bernie Sanders one; I have no dog in this fight. But I do dislike it when a bunch of angry folks silence someone. I saw it all the time as a kid when Newt and the evangelical right were in power. Today, the same abhorrent behavior is coming from the other side of the aisle. It’s all the same to me; moralizing do-gooders who can’t just leave other folks alone.
• stared 5y ago
  On a similar situation: Facebook banned "Confederation Liberty and Independence", a Polish far-right party (economically very liberal, socially very conservative, nationalistic), https://www.euronews.com/2022/01/06/polish-far-right-party-banned-from-facebook-over-alleged-covid-disinformation https://www.euronews.com/2022/01/06/polish-far-right-party-b.... There was an uproar. What is ironic, one of the party's postulates (visible on their website as a standalone slogan) was that they want to change the law so that businesses can refuse service to any person or group for any reason. And well, Facebook exercised this law. :)
• HideousKojima 5y ago
  Intellectual property is a government enforced monopoly, pretty much the opposite of a free market
• dantheman 5y ago
  You can support people's ability to make to decisions and you can tell them when you disagree. It's not government censorship, but it's still censorship.
• api 5y ago
  The right is maximalist on property rights except when it negatively impacts them. Then we need government regulation. If it were more left leaning ideas being deplatformed nobody on the right would care and instead the left would be up in arms about “cancel culture.” Very very few people are consistent in their views about privacy, freedom, or property rights. Politics is mostly a football game and the refs are only right when they call it in favor of your team.
• CyberRabbi 5y ago
  I believe in companies having freedom to do what they want but I also believe in civil rights. We need the civil right to prevent large corporations from discriminating against opinions they do not like.
  • MattPalmer1086 5y ago
    I don't believe governments should force private companies or people to publish or say things they don't want to. But I do think there is an issue where companies that are monopolies control large parts of public discourse. I would prefer the right to be able to participate in public discourse without being tied to particular companies. For example, interoperability protocols for messaging and social networking. Then people have the power to engage with who they like and companies can no longer control the flow of information in the same way. In the earlier days of the internet this is what it was like, before Facebook and Twitter monopolised and controlled information flow.
    • CyberRabbi 5y ago
      > I don't believe governments should force private companies or people to publish or say things they don't want to. Do you believe governments should force private companies to serve people they don’t want to? If so, then you understand how civil rights work. It’s not enough to ensure the government respects our rights, the government must also ensure that private companies respect our rights. Free speech has become a civil rights issue.
      • MattPalmer1086 5y ago
        I believe governments should prevent companies from discriminating against people in very limited ways. These are protected characterists such as race or sexual orientation Generally these are things that are innate to a person and are not a matter of choice for them. I don't believe political viewpoints fall into that category, but I'm willing to hear any good arguments that they should be.
        • 5y ago
• hagy 5y ago
  I agree that Spotify has the legal right to stop distributing any content they find objectionable. Anyone arguing that Spotify’s action is a first amendment violation is simply wrong. A private entity, like Spotify, can decide what content to distribute at their own discretion. I don’t think many people are making this argument. Instead, I think many of us are arguing that Spotify shouldn’t exercise that option just because of an outraged online mob. That includes those of us that aren’t particular fans of Rogan and wouldn’t be affected if we couldn’t consume his content anymore. Many of us are arguing that as a general principal; don’t give in to a short-lived and irrational angry mob. I am arguing for Spotify and other content distributors to ignore angry mobs because I worry that eventually such a mob will come for something I do value. E.g., I listen to plenty of music that includes gratuitous levels of profanity. I imagine that such music greatly offends many people, chiefly culturally conservative prudes. Should such an online mob form and demand Spotify stop distributing some of my favorite music then I hope Spotify resists that mob. Maybe one day I’ll even be a member of such a mob demanding that some platform stop distributing something that offends my sensibilities. While my emotions of hate and outrage may cloud my rational judgment, I hope the platform will have the courage to tell me and my compatriots to pound sand. If we don’t like the content, then we don’t have to consume it. *Edited to fix a mistake as pointed out in a reply.
  • olivermarks 5y ago
    Do you mean 'distributing' rather than 'disrupting'? [first line & paragraph]. I'm sure Spotify are under colossal pressure to delete historical perceived heretical 'content' on their platform in order to keep their paying customers calm during an unprecedented era of US anti free A1 speech and hysterical media driven witch hunts. I also think their long term prospects, as societal fashions change and (I hope) reason prevails, will not be good as they will be associated with a very dark period in history. IBM survived this after WWII but it took a lot of PR and having the media on their side.
    • hagy 5y ago
      Good catch. Will correct the mistake. Thanks! Agree that hopefully Spotify can resist calls to stop distributing content that other users find objectionable. As you point out, fashion will change and hopefully it does so in a way that shuns calls for censorship.
• whiddershins 5y ago
  First: If the government openly pressures Spotify, that is government censorship, which is literally what just happened. Second: Because there isn’t a good alternative for distribution. There really isn’t. Because the press employs less people nationwide than any time since … who knows, before the 1950s. We need good information. We need uncensored information and this includes misinformation. We need to hear opinions and points of view including contrarian, controversial, and fringe ones. I got an something important out of that Alex Jones returns episode. No one else I know thought it had any value, but for whatever reason I saw value in it. What is the uncensored alternative? Truly. If cloudflare can shut down whoever they want, if social media shuts down whoever they want, what is the real solution? If we don’t have an answer, we don’t have free speech, so talking about Spotify being a private company is true but it can’t be viewed in isolation.
  • ImPostingOnHN 5y ago
    > If the government openly pressures Spotify, that is government censorship, which is literally what just happened. This is absolutely false on both counts. First: at no point did the government pressure spotify to specifically take down content. Second: answering a question asked to you about what you think about a current event would not constitute censorship anyways.
• x86_64Ubuntu 5y ago
  From what I've seen on HN, censorship is anytime a platform, publisher or outlet divests itself of a right-wing content producer. Threads about Parler, Youtube, Gab, Parler & Cloudflare have wild levels of engagement with everything being considered censorship. But when books like Maus are removed from the shelves, we don't hear a peep out of the HN community compared to a banned twitter account.
• andrew_ 5y ago
  I think people are genuinely struggling with the idea that in some ways these corporations are nearly as powerful or more so, in certain aspects, than the government itself. It's a mindf*ck to consider that they can regulate speech on their platform because the platform itself is so encompassing, sprawling, and massive. It's not hard to understand (note: different than agreeing with) when looking at it through that lens.
• slibhb 5y ago
  > I don't really understand why anyone who claims to be a proponent of a free market economy has an issue with a private corporation deciding what type of content they want to broadcast. Being a proponent of free markets doesn't prevent me from criticizing how that freedom is exercised. > What Spotify chooses to do with it is completely up to them, even if they bought it with the express intention of "burning" it all, i.e. never broadcasting it, that would still not be censorship It is censorship by any reasonable definition. It's just not illegal censorship.
• canoebuilder 5y ago
  When you make a comment like this without even acknowledging the social dynamic at play, which is like the whole story, you come across as very disingenuous and very pro censorship. This is not something Spotify woke up one day and decided to do of their own volition, with their own free market defined property. There was much more to it than that. The White House(!) was calling for this type of censorship! Do you think that might be relevant to the discussion?
• Bombthecat 5y ago
  I don't like rogan, for all i care, he can burn in hell. But : the negotiation would have run very very different if they would have said :we buy it, but will never use or publish it! He might have still sold (for a higher price) or rejected the offer. You can't change the "purpose" of a contract after it was made. In german, we have a law, yes a law, basically saying : in treu und glauben (in good faith / in trust and believe) it basically prevents contractors to write contracts which fuck over signers. It is super rarely used for misuse of contract law / information of the signer, but sometimes it is. This is probably one of those cases. In good faith, that Spotify will publish his work, he signed the contract.
  • ImPostingOnHN 5y ago
    Where did you find the contract, such that you can draw conclusions about the details, the spirit, and what constitutes "good faith"?
• newbamboo 5y ago
  But they aren’t deciding for themselves, they’re being coerced by a vocal minority of people who are threatening their entire existence and have already done significant damage to their corporate valuation and reputation precisely because they are not broadcasting exactly what this vocal minority demands. It’s not about freedom for businesses. It is the exact opposite!
• blindmute 5y ago
  I don't understand why people seem to be so befuddled by the concept that there can be legal actions which are not ethical or moral. I can legally buy a new puppy every month and give it to the pound. This is morally wrong, even despite agreeing that giving animals to the pound should be legal. I see this same argument constantly, in nearly every discussion about a company doing anything bad. It's a meaningless point. Do you people posting things like this really not understand the distinction between right and legal? Or do you think moral considerations are beneath discussion?
• namlem 5y ago
  I don't have a problem with this particular instance of deplatforming because podcasts are a highly competitive space that relies mostly on RSS still. However, "free markets" according to the original definition meant free not only from state control, but from private monopolistic rent-seeking as well. In cases where one platform is especially dominant, it's not really a free market, and in those cases, it is justified to be worried about censorship.
• hackinthebochs 5y ago
  >I don't really understand why anyone who claims to be a proponent of a free market economy has an issue with a private corporation deciding what type of content they want to broadcast. It's amazing how people don't get cognitive dissonance over this disingenuous song and dance. The people lauding the choice of private companies to operate as they please when they deplatform are the very people pressuring private companies to deplatform people they don't like in the first place. If you were genuinely in favor of private companies operating as they see fit, you wouldn't feel motivated to pressure them to drop content you don't like. >What Spotify chooses to do with it is completely up to them What we don't like is that is it not left "up to them" what to do with their content. The point of the free market is that individuals are left to act independently in their own interests. This ideal is undermined when groups create pressure to deplatform or pull content.
• Dwelve 5y ago
  Ugh... what's worse than the actual censorship are people like you that pretend to not understand the issue, at all. First of all, WHO ARE YOU ARGUING WITH?!? - "proponent of a free market"? Who are you talking to? Critics of these reactions are not these people, so why on earth are you pretending you want to have a discussion when you deliberately choose to argue with people that have no objection to them? You're talking to an audience of three people, yet everybody that's on your side, the side of censorship will pretend you're refuting the opposing perspective. No, you just picked a tiny group that already agrees with you, pretend it doesn't, and then explain why they actually agree with you. Ok, so it seems like you're fine with it, because Spotify is a "private corporation", aren't you? Is Spotify free to ban all black artists then? They are a private company after all. Or is that different for reason x / y / z. Fine, let's be a little more theoretical than. Youtube, Spotify and Twitter decide to ban ALL opinions that go against invading Venezuala. Is that something you will support? Private company banning an opinion which they disagree with, all fine and dandy, correct? Top comment, most upvotes and everyone joins in on this farce... wtf is going on here?
  • detroitcoder 5y ago
    Seems pretty obvious OP is addressing a conservative audience that tends to be pro-free-market. For better or worse it is a VERY political topic and this argument attempts identify contradicting agendas of conservatives that take issue with this.
  • hnarn 5y ago
    First of all, your tone does not belong on HN. Secondly, you claim that I do not "understand the issue, at all", which is ironic to say the least since you then go on to make the following examples as presumably equal to what is going on with JR: - Discriminating artists across the board based on ethnicity - Social networks banning end-users for having an opinion Neither of these are in any way similar to selling your intellectual property to a third party and them deciding whether or not to air it. If you additionally enter an NDA with this party, voluntarily and through compensation, that is in no way anything like discrimination based on ethnicity, or blanket censorship on social media.
• bitwize 5y ago
  Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1357/ https://xkcd.com/1357/
• ecocentrik 5y ago
  Don't expect any businesses to fall on a sword for ideology when their primary concern is always their bottom line. The free market has spoken. I suggest you go reread free market first principles.
• Grustaf 5y ago
  Are you seriously saying you can't have a problem with anything a corporation ever does, as long as the motive is to make money? Else you're basically a socialist? Does that include Monsanto poisoning the ground? Blackwater lobbying for war in the third world?