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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. B

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.

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.