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Spotify knows enough people won't churn to make a huge difference (and honestly, the people who sign up because of this might even balance it out). However, wha

Spotify knows enough people won't churn to make a huge difference (and honestly, the people who sign up because of this might even balance it out). However, what they can't lose is employees. If they become a place nobody wants to work at, they're actually screwed. It's weird to see how inevitable the ending feels (to me, as an outsider). I'm 100% confident Joe Rogan will be removed from their platform; it's just a matter of how long it takes for Spotify to realize it's past the point of no return.

exdsq 5y ago
Which is just crazy. Out of all the things people could spend their times trying to improve, removing a podcaster from Spotify is very low on any rational list. Direct your energy at something important and get out of your bubble of anger at {popular to hate thing of the month}.
- dkjaudyeqooe 5y ago
  Arguably targeting the highest profile spreaders of misinformation and disinformation has the greatest impact, independent of the specific information.
  - ComradePhil 5y ago
    Experts in any field disagree. Why are opinions of some experts "misinformation" and "disinformation", specially when it is about something that we definitely don't know enough about?
    - alkonaut 5y ago
      That’s why you’d only label the absolutely worse horseshit as “misinformation”. It’s not simply a name for the minority position whereever where there isn’t consensus. More importantly it’s those areas where there is a time critical aspect to the misinformation or disinformation. Something that makes the idea of “hearing all opinions” not viable. Things that come to mind include “polls won’t open until tomorrow” (on Election Day). Or, in this case, medical information.
      - aksss 5y ago
        There's always a convenient excuse for censorship. Who defines "worse horseshit" today? Tomorrow? Show me the information and I'll find an excuse. A better standard is whether the communication rises to criminal offense or civil matter that caused harm (e.g. voter/election fraud, some sort of willful disregard/negligence). In other words, there's a standard/mechanism for redress already (there's an app for that). If opinion doesn't violate a law or expose someone to a likely successful civil suit, you should be free to express it. Hard for me to imagine scenarios where this doesn't satisfy requirements. If you're concerned about timeliness, keep in mind that censorship doesn't happen quickly enough to stop the election fraud example you gave, unless you are advocating a 'ministry of information' scenario where conversations need to pre-approval to be aired - I would assume you would not advocate for such a thing, in principle.
        alkonaut 5y ago
        > If opinion doesn't violate a law or expose someone to a likely successful civil suit, you should be free to express Absolutely. I don’t think we are arguing freedom of speech here. > If you're concerned about timeliness, keep in mind that censorship doesn't happen quickly enough to stop the election fraud example you gave Is the fact that it’s futile a good reason to say that obvious fraud should not be removed on sight? > A better standard is whether the communication rises to criminal offense or civil matter that caused harm (e.g. voter/election fraud, some sort of willful disregard/negligence). In other words, there's a standard/mechanism for redress already (there's an app for that). That’s the bar for the law. Obviously the bar for anyone such as a broadcaster can be set at that point or lower. A company has to follow the law obviously but here the question is probably what to employees, prospective employees, customers, investors etc feel. The company adds up the numbers and decides who to include in their platform. Because it’s important to keep in mind that companies promote a select few voices on a platform. They don’t censor away an uncomfortable voice. They chose not to be the megaphone. I’m not sure what the alternative is to the situation we are seeing? Forcing platforms to give everyone a voice? There will always be arbitrary moderation and association in free media. Because it’s part of what free media is. We can’t have a free press without self-censorship.
    - okl 5y ago
      > Experts in any field disagree. Why are opinions of some experts "misinformation" and "disinformation" Find out if/why the experts are justified to hold their respective opinion, evaluate the facts and come to a conclusion. Just because someone says something does not make it true. Regardless if that person is an expert or not.
      - aksss 5y ago
        I agree with your approach if it's us as individuals making the evaluation, but if it's some centralized authority (even the private/public censorship arrangement as we have now) "clearing" allowable conversation in the public sphere, then would completely disagree. Free and open dialog is a hill to die on. One of those political principles that is, for me, more important than any 'safety' or conformity benefit claimed from censorship. I confess to being a bit gobsmacked that this is even a debate in the U.S., for as many times as it's been had and litigated in the past.
        okl 5y ago
        Oh sure, I don't support that. I would love to see people reward quality information instead of sentational infotainment with their "clicks" but alas that's not the world we're living in. -- What to do?
  - jimmyjazz14 5y ago
    I don't know if that's true, attempts to censor information tends to lend credibility to those being censored.
  - redisman 5y ago
    What impact? He’ll literally peace out with his $100M back to YouTube and free aggregators like Apple with much larger reach. He’s also the most popular podcast! So he wont have any problems finding a new network if need be. These people are delusional if they think they can change anything
  - aksss 5y ago
    Does that include governments? Or is there no objective standard -- the mis/disinformation is whatever the (local/state/federal) government is not currently supporting? It's obviously a slippery slope approaching censorship this way. Mis/disinformation should not be conceived of as skeptical questioning that may lead to dumb people making bad choices. That's a level of second-guessing and faux-benign concern that cannot guide policies of censorship. Skeptical questioning, dialog, and debate is more beneficial for society than it is dangerous to dumb people (who are high-risk even without overhearing the speculative conversations of others). There is some level of acceptable risk, whether it's vehicular traffic, or allowing people to speak their mind. Think about the societal product of ten years living where skepticism of government is effectively outlawed vs a government routinely subjected to open skepticism. I think the latter is a stronger society.
- tombert 5y ago
  At the risk of starting a flame war, if people see something bad, even if it is {popular to hate thing of the month}, should nothing be done about it?
  - pcan77 5y ago
    Pretty sure racist remarks on the podcast and use of n-word casually isn't {popular to hate thing of the month}, so I respectfully disagree heavily with you here.
    - tombert 5y ago
      I don't think we actually disagree here; I totally think that racist remarks and casual use of the N-word is pretty bad, more than just a cringy thing to hate in a month. I was trying to say that, using the parent comment's framework, even if it was the {popular thing to hate of the month} (which it isn't), if it is sufficiently bad, something should be done about it regardless.
    - stjohnswarts 5y ago
      If you listened to them in context they weren't racist. I listened to at least 5 of them in context, and they weren't racist and mostly portraying the opposite, so I'm satisfied he's not racist and this is a made up out of context attack as is typical of extremists. They post sound bites without context to enrage weak-minded people who won't seek out clarity on the situation. It's a tactic as old as propaganda.
  - ytNumbers 5y ago
    People consider misinformation to be bad. The problem with censoring it is that I can think of many important instances in my lifetime where accepted narratives were later debunked and misinformation later became accepted fact. Since our understanding of COVID-19 has shifted quite a bit over the past two years, it seems to me the proper thing to do is to let people have freedom of speech.
  - exdsq 5y ago
    I think it depends on so many things. In this particular case there are far worse problems in the world than Joe Rogan quoting someone and using the N word. I completely disagree with his stance on vaccinations but I also disagree that he's some sort of major source of disinformation. In the general case, I think it's bad that the socially expected thing at the moment is to be angry at {something}. It is both bad for peoples mental health and in general and it detracts from more serious issues in the world. Take for example the situation in Ukraine. Wouldn't it be more effective to be vocal to our politicians to say we don't want to start some catastrophic war there than to try and force a tech company to remove a podcast host? If Joe Rogan isn't removed, will people even remember this discussion in three months? Probably not, because by that time {someone} will have said {something} and everyone will be tweeting angry thoughts at them instead.
- gkoberger 5y ago
  Right or wrong (I think right, personally), a lot of people have a lot of time on their hands because they're sitting at home due to a pandemic (while loved ones are getting sick). This is different than normal "cancelling" over a bad joke; it's about being tired of misinformation being spread that is elongating this virus and causing countless deaths.
  - LoveGracePeace 5y ago
    Not a big fan of Rogan but he isn't spreading misinformation, he's speaking his mind, voicing his opinion. There was a time only a few years ago when this was a time honored concept called Freedom of Speech.
    - stjohnswarts 5y ago
      I agree. I think he has some dumb takes on things, but I actually signed UP for spotify as a result. Before I was just using a combination of adblockers to block 90% of spotify's ads.
    - redisman 5y ago
      It’s pretty crazy how anyone talking outside of the party line is now a racist and a anti-vaxxer and god knows what. You can’t stop people from thinking differently from you unless you’re willing to instate a China-level state
  - dgfitz 5y ago
    > sitting at home due to a pandemic People are still sitting at home? That is not my experience even a little bit.
    - agilob 5y ago
      >People are still sitting at home? That is not my experience even a little bit. In a company I work for not a single person came back to our local office, in fact, many people decided to move further away from the city and we said publicly that forced coming back to the office will mean changing jobs for us. That's coming from ~150 developers and testers. Even my neighbour who works in a call centre works 4 of 5 days from home... Like is anyone coming back to your fancy cubicles or dirty openspaces?
- nextlevelwizard 5y ago
  I haven't really followed Rogan's show since it became Spotify exclusive, but unless stuff has really went off the rails I don't recognize the qualities people are painting on him. I don't know if this is some 4D chess move from Spotify, but I actually had to take a look at the two "antivax" episodes and neither had antivax message. So either this is all very clever marketing from Spotify or people try to make Rogan look bad for whatever reason and they don't realize that if you out right lie about things that are easy to verify it makes everything else you push less credible.
  - weeblewobble 5y ago
    “If you’re, like, 21 years old, and you say to me, ‘Should I get vaccinated?’ I’ll go ‘No,’” - Joe Rogan, 4/23/21
    - exdsq 5y ago
      This was almost a year ago when vaccines were still new and the death/hospitalization rates of healthy 21 years olds from COVID is basically zero. I’m 27 and have my jabs, and suggest others get theirs too, but I totally understand this perspective. In fact you couldn’t even get your vaccines in the UK last April at 21.
      - weeblewobble 5y ago
        This is a bit of kitchen sink argument-- it was a long time ago! young people actually don't need the vaccine! he's just sharing his perspective! British people couldn't get vaccinated in April! None of which addresses the claim in OP that people calling Joe Rogan "anti-vaxx" are "outright lying". It is anti-vaccine to encourage young people not to get vaccinated. Simple as that.
        lamontcg 5y ago
        > young people actually don't need the vaccine! SARS-CoV-2 causes much higher rates of myocarditis in kids than the vaccines do: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7035e5.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7035e5.htm Kids should still get vaccinated. They are at low risk from SARS-CoV-2, but risk of the vaccines are still even lower.
- furgooswft13 5y ago
  > Direct your energy at something important Like paying musicians reasonable amounts of money per stream? People have been complaining about this since the very beginning of Spotify. But as usual woke nonsense takes up all the air in the room because it's fiscally irrelevant.
- Johnny555 5y ago
  removing a podcaster from Spotify is very low on any rational list. Direct your energy at something important If someone is really offended or disagree with what he's broadcasting, then why do you think that removing him would be low on any rational list? His podcast reaches 11 million listeners, so getting him off the air seems like it would be pretty impactful.
  - exdsq 5y ago
    Let’s assume what he’s said is awful and needs to be removed because it’s dangerous. I disagree with this, but I’ll assume it’s the case. Spotify removes him. He goes to YouTube or something. His fans go there. Zero tangible impact. This can actually go far worse - after the Trump subreddits got taken down they moved to another domain which is a clone of Reddit but only about Trump and now you have a smaller echo chamber with the same people attending but less counter-information or moderation. So it’s possible that you can make things worse this way too. It could make an impact if he was banned from Spotify and then quit podcasts entirely, but that’s not likely because it’s so popular. All the time we discuss this we aren’t addressing truly horrific issues like Chinese persecution of Muslim minorities or the mobilization of troops in Ukraine or other things that people will actually remember in a few months or the UK government doing all sorts of interesting things.
    - Johnny555 5y ago
      His fans go there. But will they all follow him there? If 10% of his fans don't, then he's talking to a million fewer people than he used to. And, of course, if he says the same thing on Youtube, they'll start the same campaign to drop him from there too, until all that's left are niche providers where it's harder for people to find him. Like you, I don't agree that he's said anything so bad that he deserves to be kicked off spotify or any platform, but if someone is passionate about it, doing so would reduce his reach, at least temporarily.
      - bmelton 5y ago
        Arguably, Joe has done more for Spotify than Spotify has done for Joe (ignoring the $100 million deal) Him moving to Youtube or somewhere that isn't paywalled likely increases his availability to those who aren't willing to pay to listen to him
dangerboysteve 5y ago
And yet Facebook still manages to hire good engineers.
- Nicksil 5y ago
  >And yet Facebook still manages to hire good engineers. How do we know they aren't just average or mediocre software developers?
  - tombert 5y ago
    They managed to recruit semi-famous computer scientists like Simon Marlow and Bryan O'Sullivan (well, buy his company and he stayed), both of whom could get jobs at basically any company. This doesn't mean that the average engineer is any good there, just that they do have exceptional ones too.
  - bener 5y ago
    You'll find a lot of very insightful blog posts on HN written by talented engineers that work at FB or are ex FB.. It's quite common knowledge that a lot of brilliant engineers are hired by FB. I am by no means a fan of FB but it's a known fact that they hire many excellent engineers.
  - spoonjim 5y ago
    They don't need to hire Dennis Ritchies, they need to hire people who are good enough to achieve their business objectives. Facebook's apps work, their site is performant, they are not drowning in storage costs, etc... they have the engineers they need. Their business problems are not due to engineering.
- pm90 5y ago
  They do so by compensating the incredibly well. I doubt Spotify can do that.
- dannyr 5y ago
  Can't find the article but Facebook appears to be not one of the top choices for fresh grads.
rkapsoro 5y ago
This is similar to the situation at Basecamp not long ago. https://world.hey.com/dhh/basecamp-s-new-etiquette-regarding-societal-politics-at-work-b44bef69 https://world.hey.com/dhh/basecamp-s-new-etiquette-regarding... If I recall correctly, something similar happened at Coinbase, too. It does appear that the contingent of people with this attitude are a loud, sizable minority. Having them all leave in anger, however, isn't the death of a company despite the amount of noise. Perhaps, maybe even the opposite: without the agitation of an ideological few, the rest will be free to get back to work.
- pl0x 5y ago
  This is exactly what happened Basecamp and Coinbase are thriving and even increased their diversity numbers. The vocal minority are just that and it is mostly a white woke crowd that claims to speak for other minorities.
Miner49er 5y ago
> Spotify knows enough people won't churn to make a huge difference I'm not so sure about this. Other streaming platforms are all basically at least as good as Spotify now, and it isn't too hard to switch.
- nextlevelwizard 5y ago
  But also why switch? Just because some dude on some show said a bad word? George Carlin's stuff is on Spotify and he famously used 7 bad words.
  - Miner49er 5y ago
    No, because Spotify is showing more and more that there priority isn't really music anymore. I don't care about podcasts. Spotify has slowly started pushing them more and more. Now it's costing them music. I'm not alone either, most people sign up for Spotify for music. I think many music fans really care about music and supporting the artists who make it. I don't care about Rogan or what he says. I don't want him censored. But the fact is that Spotify has less music now because he's on their platform. This whole event shows to me where Spotify's priorities are. It's kind of just a final straw. I've switched to a platform that focuses on music and pays artists more.
    - nextlevelwizard 5y ago
      I don't get how Spotify is less about music just because they now have a podcst section. Only hints about podcasts is the "Own Episodes" button on left and then I have to scroll down 6 screens until I see "Your recommended episodes". How is the music experience gotten any worse after they added podcasts?
      - Miner49er 5y ago
        For me podcasts are all over mt home page, even though I've only listened to some a few times a long tkme ago. The music expierence is worse because artists like Neil Young are no longer on the platform.
TameAntelope 5y ago
I dunno, Dave Chappelle's Netflix special is still up; I think if the Spotify CEO commits to not pulling Rogan from the platform, he can outlast the outrage. Besides, why would Rogan actually care, other than possibly the money, of which a great deal of it has already been paid? Joe Rogan doesn't need Spotify to remain the most popular podcast in the world by far, he just needs: * A CDN willing to host the audio files and an RSS and/or Atom feed. * Advertisers willing to pay him to play commercials during his podcast. There are plenty of both, so Joe Rogan will be perfectly fine, he will not in any way be "silenced" by any action Spotify decides to pursue. The "value" of all of this is that it sends a message to other podcasters, who are not even remotely as popular, that not everything is okay on Spotify's platform. That's also probably fine. If you want to say racist things, don't go to Spotify. Podcasters won't get censored and Spotify doesn't have to send racism to its users. Everybody wins. This situation, of all recent "cancellation" situations seems the least consequential, given how democratized podcasting actually is. The Internet is doing its thing w/r/t censorship, which is how it was built.
- aksss 5y ago
  Debatable - I think the Internet is straining mighty hard to do its thing. When major cloud vendors and government can conspire to shut down an alternative platform (I've already forgotten the example - Parler) right before an election, it's not a good testament. Parler is online today, it seems, but that's small beer considering how it all went down. We still have the government spox calling for censorship, collaborating with private companies to implement censorship, and corporations buckling under the strain of PR, employee, shareholder, prospective regulatory, and litigation pressures to comply. The problematic element here is increasing centralization of the Internet and collaboration with government. Either of those by themselves would be normal, the two combined speaks badly for the health of the Internet. It will be interesting to see how Rumble, HowTube, GETTR, and other alternatives to the majors fare if they can gain traction with general audiences rather than servicing the politically disenfranchised. One might argue that they only survive now based on their obscurity. Arguably there is pressure to keep them obscure by labeling anything aligned with the principles of free speech as racist, hateful, dangerous, etc. Until society gets calloused to those accusations and a climate of constant fear generally, alternative communication channels are held under an effective ceiling of success.
typest 5y ago
> I'm 100% confident Joe Rogan will be removed from their platform Really? I'm 90% confident Joe Rogan will not be removed from their platform. They spent 100M to get exclusive rights to his podcast, and their market cap subsequently went up 1B. The best future for Spotify is in aggregating podcasts, not music, and Joe Rogan is the number one podcaster in the world. This isn't some minor player on their platform -- Joe Rogan represents Spotify's best chance at a future where they aren't just competing away profits against Apple Music. They aren't going to give that up lightly. Not to mention, they knew what they were getting into when they brought him on.
- wonderwonder 5y ago
  Really depends on the spine of the CEO. If he sticks to his guns, makes a blanket statement essentially saying "Rogan is staying, deal with it" then he will stay. If the CEO allows activist employees to continue to cause problems then Rogan will be removed.
hourislate 5y ago
>However, what they can't lose is employees. Please, everyone is replaceable. These folks won't even cause a ripple. Everyone has got a price, everyone.... This whole event is driven by the Wokism and the Progressive/Liberal Media. Rogan is killing them and making them all irrelevant. They have to virtue siganl and project in an effort to save themselves. I'll quit Spotify if they get rid of Rogan, so will a lot of other folks.
- aksss 5y ago
  I'm not big on boycotts, much less big talk about them, but I confess I lean the same way. If Rogan gets the boot, I would seriously consider dropping Spotify out of principle assuming there's some other service to cover my music interests. Censorship is a cancer and it seems to be metastasizing in the US still, not in remission. Voting with my wallet is one of the few things I can do in response.
mbesto 5y ago
As a general point for SaaS business this is a very fair point. However... Honestly, so what if Spotify doesn't have the top talent? All of their investments are in content, not R&D. The application itself is very stable and globally ready. I won't trivialize the SRE required to do that, but most of the operational components are already there. Spotify's moat is its content and its network effect, which is why a company like Tidal can't compete no matter how much money they throw at R&D talent. So I think I disagree...content is everything in this specific space.
elp 5y ago
My guess is that the listener numbers for Rogan have gone through the roof because of this and the vast vast majority of paying Spotify customers don't care. I'm don't like Rogan but I have no intention of cancelling my paid subs. I doubt many real employees are going to leave either. Look at the Netflix protests around Dave Chapelle. Very few actual protesters and I think there was only one person who ended up resigning. The world would become a much better place if we would all start publicly saying: "I agree with what you are saying but you are over reacting"

exdsq 5y ago

Which is just crazy. Out of all the things people could spend their times trying to improve, removing a podcaster from Spotify is very low on any rational list. Direct your energy at something important and get out of your bubble of anger at {popular to hate thing of the month}.

dkjaudyeqooe 5y ago
Arguably targeting the highest profile spreaders of misinformation and disinformation has the greatest impact, independent of the specific information.
- ComradePhil 5y ago
  Experts in any field disagree. Why are opinions of some experts "misinformation" and "disinformation", specially when it is about something that we definitely don't know enough about?
  - alkonaut 5y ago
    That’s why you’d only label the absolutely worse horseshit as “misinformation”. It’s not simply a name for the minority position whereever where there isn’t consensus. More importantly it’s those areas where there is a time critical aspect to the misinformation or disinformation. Something that makes the idea of “hearing all opinions” not viable. Things that come to mind include “polls won’t open until tomorrow” (on Election Day). Or, in this case, medical information.
    - aksss 5y ago
      There's always a convenient excuse for censorship. Who defines "worse horseshit" today? Tomorrow? Show me the information and I'll find an excuse. A better standard is whether the communication rises to criminal offense or civil matter that caused harm (e.g. voter/election fraud, some sort of willful disregard/negligence). In other words, there's a standard/mechanism for redress already (there's an app for that). If opinion doesn't violate a law or expose someone to a likely successful civil suit, you should be free to express it. Hard for me to imagine scenarios where this doesn't satisfy requirements. If you're concerned about timeliness, keep in mind that censorship doesn't happen quickly enough to stop the election fraud example you gave, unless you are advocating a 'ministry of information' scenario where conversations need to pre-approval to be aired - I would assume you would not advocate for such a thing, in principle.
      - alkonaut 5y ago
        > If opinion doesn't violate a law or expose someone to a likely successful civil suit, you should be free to express Absolutely. I don’t think we are arguing freedom of speech here. > If you're concerned about timeliness, keep in mind that censorship doesn't happen quickly enough to stop the election fraud example you gave Is the fact that it’s futile a good reason to say that obvious fraud should not be removed on sight? > A better standard is whether the communication rises to criminal offense or civil matter that caused harm (e.g. voter/election fraud, some sort of willful disregard/negligence). In other words, there's a standard/mechanism for redress already (there's an app for that). That’s the bar for the law. Obviously the bar for anyone such as a broadcaster can be set at that point or lower. A company has to follow the law obviously but here the question is probably what to employees, prospective employees, customers, investors etc feel. The company adds up the numbers and decides who to include in their platform. Because it’s important to keep in mind that companies promote a select few voices on a platform. They don’t censor away an uncomfortable voice. They chose not to be the megaphone. I’m not sure what the alternative is to the situation we are seeing? Forcing platforms to give everyone a voice? There will always be arbitrary moderation and association in free media. Because it’s part of what free media is. We can’t have a free press without self-censorship.
  - okl 5y ago
    > Experts in any field disagree. Why are opinions of some experts "misinformation" and "disinformation" Find out if/why the experts are justified to hold their respective opinion, evaluate the facts and come to a conclusion. Just because someone says something does not make it true. Regardless if that person is an expert or not.
    - aksss 5y ago
      I agree with your approach if it's us as individuals making the evaluation, but if it's some centralized authority (even the private/public censorship arrangement as we have now) "clearing" allowable conversation in the public sphere, then would completely disagree. Free and open dialog is a hill to die on. One of those political principles that is, for me, more important than any 'safety' or conformity benefit claimed from censorship. I confess to being a bit gobsmacked that this is even a debate in the U.S., for as many times as it's been had and litigated in the past.
      - okl 5y ago
        Oh sure, I don't support that. I would love to see people reward quality information instead of sentational infotainment with their "clicks" but alas that's not the world we're living in. -- What to do?
- jimmyjazz14 5y ago
  I don't know if that's true, attempts to censor information tends to lend credibility to those being censored.
- redisman 5y ago
  What impact? He’ll literally peace out with his $100M back to YouTube and free aggregators like Apple with much larger reach. He’s also the most popular podcast! So he wont have any problems finding a new network if need be. These people are delusional if they think they can change anything
- aksss 5y ago
  Does that include governments? Or is there no objective standard -- the mis/disinformation is whatever the (local/state/federal) government is not currently supporting? It's obviously a slippery slope approaching censorship this way. Mis/disinformation should not be conceived of as skeptical questioning that may lead to dumb people making bad choices. That's a level of second-guessing and faux-benign concern that cannot guide policies of censorship. Skeptical questioning, dialog, and debate is more beneficial for society than it is dangerous to dumb people (who are high-risk even without overhearing the speculative conversations of others). There is some level of acceptable risk, whether it's vehicular traffic, or allowing people to speak their mind. Think about the societal product of ten years living where skepticism of government is effectively outlawed vs a government routinely subjected to open skepticism. I think the latter is a stronger society.
tombert 5y ago
At the risk of starting a flame war, if people see something bad, even if it is {popular to hate thing of the month}, should nothing be done about it?
- pcan77 5y ago
  Pretty sure racist remarks on the podcast and use of n-word casually isn't {popular to hate thing of the month}, so I respectfully disagree heavily with you here.
  - tombert 5y ago
    I don't think we actually disagree here; I totally think that racist remarks and casual use of the N-word is pretty bad, more than just a cringy thing to hate in a month. I was trying to say that, using the parent comment's framework, even if it was the {popular thing to hate of the month} (which it isn't), if it is sufficiently bad, something should be done about it regardless.
  - stjohnswarts 5y ago
    If you listened to them in context they weren't racist. I listened to at least 5 of them in context, and they weren't racist and mostly portraying the opposite, so I'm satisfied he's not racist and this is a made up out of context attack as is typical of extremists. They post sound bites without context to enrage weak-minded people who won't seek out clarity on the situation. It's a tactic as old as propaganda.
- ytNumbers 5y ago
  People consider misinformation to be bad. The problem with censoring it is that I can think of many important instances in my lifetime where accepted narratives were later debunked and misinformation later became accepted fact. Since our understanding of COVID-19 has shifted quite a bit over the past two years, it seems to me the proper thing to do is to let people have freedom of speech.
- exdsq 5y ago
  I think it depends on so many things. In this particular case there are far worse problems in the world than Joe Rogan quoting someone and using the N word. I completely disagree with his stance on vaccinations but I also disagree that he's some sort of major source of disinformation. In the general case, I think it's bad that the socially expected thing at the moment is to be angry at {something}. It is both bad for peoples mental health and in general and it detracts from more serious issues in the world. Take for example the situation in Ukraine. Wouldn't it be more effective to be vocal to our politicians to say we don't want to start some catastrophic war there than to try and force a tech company to remove a podcast host? If Joe Rogan isn't removed, will people even remember this discussion in three months? Probably not, because by that time {someone} will have said {something} and everyone will be tweeting angry thoughts at them instead.
gkoberger 5y ago
Right or wrong (I think right, personally), a lot of people have a lot of time on their hands because they're sitting at home due to a pandemic (while loved ones are getting sick). This is different than normal "cancelling" over a bad joke; it's about being tired of misinformation being spread that is elongating this virus and causing countless deaths.
- LoveGracePeace 5y ago
  Not a big fan of Rogan but he isn't spreading misinformation, he's speaking his mind, voicing his opinion. There was a time only a few years ago when this was a time honored concept called Freedom of Speech.
  - stjohnswarts 5y ago
    I agree. I think he has some dumb takes on things, but I actually signed UP for spotify as a result. Before I was just using a combination of adblockers to block 90% of spotify's ads.
  - redisman 5y ago
    It’s pretty crazy how anyone talking outside of the party line is now a racist and a anti-vaxxer and god knows what. You can’t stop people from thinking differently from you unless you’re willing to instate a China-level state
- dgfitz 5y ago
  > sitting at home due to a pandemic People are still sitting at home? That is not my experience even a little bit.
  - agilob 5y ago
    >People are still sitting at home? That is not my experience even a little bit. In a company I work for not a single person came back to our local office, in fact, many people decided to move further away from the city and we said publicly that forced coming back to the office will mean changing jobs for us. That's coming from ~150 developers and testers. Even my neighbour who works in a call centre works 4 of 5 days from home... Like is anyone coming back to your fancy cubicles or dirty openspaces?
nextlevelwizard 5y ago
I haven't really followed Rogan's show since it became Spotify exclusive, but unless stuff has really went off the rails I don't recognize the qualities people are painting on him. I don't know if this is some 4D chess move from Spotify, but I actually had to take a look at the two "antivax" episodes and neither had antivax message. So either this is all very clever marketing from Spotify or people try to make Rogan look bad for whatever reason and they don't realize that if you out right lie about things that are easy to verify it makes everything else you push less credible.
- weeblewobble 5y ago
  “If you’re, like, 21 years old, and you say to me, ‘Should I get vaccinated?’ I’ll go ‘No,’” - Joe Rogan, 4/23/21
  - exdsq 5y ago
    This was almost a year ago when vaccines were still new and the death/hospitalization rates of healthy 21 years olds from COVID is basically zero. I’m 27 and have my jabs, and suggest others get theirs too, but I totally understand this perspective. In fact you couldn’t even get your vaccines in the UK last April at 21.
    - weeblewobble 5y ago
      This is a bit of kitchen sink argument-- it was a long time ago! young people actually don't need the vaccine! he's just sharing his perspective! British people couldn't get vaccinated in April! None of which addresses the claim in OP that people calling Joe Rogan "anti-vaxx" are "outright lying". It is anti-vaccine to encourage young people not to get vaccinated. Simple as that.
      - lamontcg 5y ago
        > young people actually don't need the vaccine! SARS-CoV-2 causes much higher rates of myocarditis in kids than the vaccines do: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7035e5.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7035e5.htm Kids should still get vaccinated. They are at low risk from SARS-CoV-2, but risk of the vaccines are still even lower.
furgooswft13 5y ago
> Direct your energy at something important Like paying musicians reasonable amounts of money per stream? People have been complaining about this since the very beginning of Spotify. But as usual woke nonsense takes up all the air in the room because it's fiscally irrelevant.
Johnny555 5y ago
removing a podcaster from Spotify is very low on any rational list. Direct your energy at something important If someone is really offended or disagree with what he's broadcasting, then why do you think that removing him would be low on any rational list? His podcast reaches 11 million listeners, so getting him off the air seems like it would be pretty impactful.
- exdsq 5y ago
  Let’s assume what he’s said is awful and needs to be removed because it’s dangerous. I disagree with this, but I’ll assume it’s the case. Spotify removes him. He goes to YouTube or something. His fans go there. Zero tangible impact. This can actually go far worse - after the Trump subreddits got taken down they moved to another domain which is a clone of Reddit but only about Trump and now you have a smaller echo chamber with the same people attending but less counter-information or moderation. So it’s possible that you can make things worse this way too. It could make an impact if he was banned from Spotify and then quit podcasts entirely, but that’s not likely because it’s so popular. All the time we discuss this we aren’t addressing truly horrific issues like Chinese persecution of Muslim minorities or the mobilization of troops in Ukraine or other things that people will actually remember in a few months or the UK government doing all sorts of interesting things.
  - Johnny555 5y ago
    His fans go there. But will they all follow him there? If 10% of his fans don't, then he's talking to a million fewer people than he used to. And, of course, if he says the same thing on Youtube, they'll start the same campaign to drop him from there too, until all that's left are niche providers where it's harder for people to find him. Like you, I don't agree that he's said anything so bad that he deserves to be kicked off spotify or any platform, but if someone is passionate about it, doing so would reduce his reach, at least temporarily.
    - bmelton 5y ago
      Arguably, Joe has done more for Spotify than Spotify has done for Joe (ignoring the $100 million deal) Him moving to Youtube or somewhere that isn't paywalled likely increases his availability to those who aren't willing to pay to listen to him

dangerboysteve 5y ago

And yet Facebook still manages to hire good engineers.

Nicksil 5y ago
>And yet Facebook still manages to hire good engineers. How do we know they aren't just average or mediocre software developers?
- tombert 5y ago
  They managed to recruit semi-famous computer scientists like Simon Marlow and Bryan O'Sullivan (well, buy his company and he stayed), both of whom could get jobs at basically any company. This doesn't mean that the average engineer is any good there, just that they do have exceptional ones too.
- bener 5y ago
  You'll find a lot of very insightful blog posts on HN written by talented engineers that work at FB or are ex FB.. It's quite common knowledge that a lot of brilliant engineers are hired by FB. I am by no means a fan of FB but it's a known fact that they hire many excellent engineers.
- spoonjim 5y ago
  They don't need to hire Dennis Ritchies, they need to hire people who are good enough to achieve their business objectives. Facebook's apps work, their site is performant, they are not drowning in storage costs, etc... they have the engineers they need. Their business problems are not due to engineering.
pm90 5y ago
They do so by compensating the incredibly well. I doubt Spotify can do that.
dannyr 5y ago
Can't find the article but Facebook appears to be not one of the top choices for fresh grads.

rkapsoro 5y ago

This is similar to the situation at Basecamp not long ago. https://world.hey.com/dhh/basecamp-s-new-etiquette-regarding-societal-politics-at-work-b44bef69 https://world.hey.com/dhh/basecamp-s-new-etiquette-regarding... If I recall correctly, something similar happened at Coinbase, too. It does appear that the contingent of people with this attitude are a loud, sizable minority. Having them all leave in anger, however, isn't the death of a company despite the amount of noise. Perhaps, maybe even the opposite: without the agitation of an ideological few, the rest will be free to get back to work.

pl0x 5y ago
This is exactly what happened Basecamp and Coinbase are thriving and even increased their diversity numbers. The vocal minority are just that and it is mostly a white woke crowd that claims to speak for other minorities.

Miner49er 5y ago

> Spotify knows enough people won't churn to make a huge difference I'm not so sure about this. Other streaming platforms are all basically at least as good as Spotify now, and it isn't too hard to switch.

nextlevelwizard 5y ago
But also why switch? Just because some dude on some show said a bad word? George Carlin's stuff is on Spotify and he famously used 7 bad words.
- Miner49er 5y ago
  No, because Spotify is showing more and more that there priority isn't really music anymore. I don't care about podcasts. Spotify has slowly started pushing them more and more. Now it's costing them music. I'm not alone either, most people sign up for Spotify for music. I think many music fans really care about music and supporting the artists who make it. I don't care about Rogan or what he says. I don't want him censored. But the fact is that Spotify has less music now because he's on their platform. This whole event shows to me where Spotify's priorities are. It's kind of just a final straw. I've switched to a platform that focuses on music and pays artists more.
  - nextlevelwizard 5y ago
    I don't get how Spotify is less about music just because they now have a podcst section. Only hints about podcasts is the "Own Episodes" button on left and then I have to scroll down 6 screens until I see "Your recommended episodes". How is the music experience gotten any worse after they added podcasts?
    - Miner49er 5y ago
      For me podcasts are all over mt home page, even though I've only listened to some a few times a long tkme ago. The music expierence is worse because artists like Neil Young are no longer on the platform.

TameAntelope 5y ago

I dunno, Dave Chappelle's Netflix special is still up; I think if the Spotify CEO commits to not pulling Rogan from the platform, he can outlast the outrage. Besides, why would Rogan actually care, other than possibly the money, of which a great deal of it has already been paid? Joe Rogan doesn't need Spotify to remain the most popular podcast in the world by far, he just needs: * A CDN willing to host the audio files and an RSS and/or Atom feed. * Advertisers willing to pay him to play commercials during his podcast. There are plenty of both, so Joe Rogan will be perfectly fine, he will not in any way be "silenced" by any action Spotify decides to pursue. The "value" of all of this is that it sends a message to other podcasters, who are not even remotely as popular, that not everything is okay on Spotify's platform. That's also probably fine. If you want to say racist things, don't go to Spotify. Podcasters won't get censored and Spotify doesn't have to send racism to its users. Everybody wins. This situation, of all recent "cancellation" situations seems the least consequential, given how democratized podcasting actually is. The Internet is doing its thing w/r/t censorship, which is how it was built.

aksss 5y ago
Debatable - I think the Internet is straining mighty hard to do its thing. When major cloud vendors and government can conspire to shut down an alternative platform (I've already forgotten the example - Parler) right before an election, it's not a good testament. Parler is online today, it seems, but that's small beer considering how it all went down. We still have the government spox calling for censorship, collaborating with private companies to implement censorship, and corporations buckling under the strain of PR, employee, shareholder, prospective regulatory, and litigation pressures to comply. The problematic element here is increasing centralization of the Internet and collaboration with government. Either of those by themselves would be normal, the two combined speaks badly for the health of the Internet. It will be interesting to see how Rumble, HowTube, GETTR, and other alternatives to the majors fare if they can gain traction with general audiences rather than servicing the politically disenfranchised. One might argue that they only survive now based on their obscurity. Arguably there is pressure to keep them obscure by labeling anything aligned with the principles of free speech as racist, hateful, dangerous, etc. Until society gets calloused to those accusations and a climate of constant fear generally, alternative communication channels are held under an effective ceiling of success.

typest 5y ago

> I'm 100% confident Joe Rogan will be removed from their platform Really? I'm 90% confident Joe Rogan will not be removed from their platform. They spent 100M to get exclusive rights to his podcast, and their market cap subsequently went up 1B. The best future for Spotify is in aggregating podcasts, not music, and Joe Rogan is the number one podcaster in the world. This isn't some minor player on their platform -- Joe Rogan represents Spotify's best chance at a future where they aren't just competing away profits against Apple Music. They aren't going to give that up lightly. Not to mention, they knew what they were getting into when they brought him on.

wonderwonder 5y ago
Really depends on the spine of the CEO. If he sticks to his guns, makes a blanket statement essentially saying "Rogan is staying, deal with it" then he will stay. If the CEO allows activist employees to continue to cause problems then Rogan will be removed.

hourislate 5y ago

>However, what they can't lose is employees. Please, everyone is replaceable. These folks won't even cause a ripple. Everyone has got a price, everyone.... This whole event is driven by the Wokism and the Progressive/Liberal Media. Rogan is killing them and making them all irrelevant. They have to virtue siganl and project in an effort to save themselves. I'll quit Spotify if they get rid of Rogan, so will a lot of other folks.

aksss 5y ago
I'm not big on boycotts, much less big talk about them, but I confess I lean the same way. If Rogan gets the boot, I would seriously consider dropping Spotify out of principle assuming there's some other service to cover my music interests. Censorship is a cancer and it seems to be metastasizing in the US still, not in remission. Voting with my wallet is one of the few things I can do in response.

mbesto 5y ago

As a general point for SaaS business this is a very fair point. However... Honestly, so what if Spotify doesn't have the top talent? All of their investments are in content, not R&D. The application itself is very stable and globally ready. I won't trivialize the SRE required to do that, but most of the operational components are already there. Spotify's moat is its content and its network effect, which is why a company like Tidal can't compete no matter how much money they throw at R&D talent. So I think I disagree...content is everything in this specific space.

elp 5y ago

My guess is that the listener numbers for Rogan have gone through the roof because of this and the vast vast majority of paying Spotify customers don't care. I'm don't like Rogan but I have no intention of cancelling my paid subs. I doubt many real employees are going to leave either. Look at the Netflix protests around Dave Chapelle. Very few actual protesters and I think there was only one person who ended up resigning. The world would become a much better place if we would all start publicly saying: "I agree with what you are saying but you are over reacting"