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> The prophetic accuracy of Bradbury’s work is evident in the recent controversy over Joe Rogan’s podcast. There's a lot of smoke and mirrors in this. Suppose

• slibhb 5y ago
  > Information overload forces you to do selection. And that's not "censorship". If you, a consumer, are making the decision then it's not censorship. If some company, government, organization, school, etc is making the decision then it is censorship. Sometimes, perhaps, censorship is called for. And censorship is only illegal if the government is involved. But in general, legal or not, censorship is bad. People should be allowed to say what they think and whether they have a platform should be decided by whether other people want to listen. What disturbs me about the Joe Rogan situation is that Rogan is not an alt-right deplorable. He's not scary or mean, he exudes youthful exuberance and curiosity. He's thoughtful, un-ideological and he's a good conversationalist. The attempt to brand him as a deplorable is genuinely creepy. As far as the article goes, I don't think we're close to any dystopia. These are growing pains as the media opens up. I'm optimistic.
  • LightG 5y ago
    So, you're saying that if I, as the CEO of a private company choose, for example, to host certainn people or certain products on my platform, it's censorship? Strongly disagree. At the government level, I might agree - but not with private companies.
    • _ea1k 5y ago
      If those choices are made purely because some popular opinions are popular but outside the overton window of your particular political party, then there's a problem.
    • slibhb 5y ago
      Whether it's a government or private company has no bearing on whether it's censorship. It has bearing on whether the censorship is illegal. In other words, private companies are allowed to censor but that doesn't magically make it something other than censorship.
      • alxjrvs 5y ago
        no, but it does materially differ from censorship of a state. No one is making Joe Rogan illegal. They are mad Spotify is paying for his nonsense. If Spotify stopped paying him, nothing would materially change for his listeners. Unless Spotify went so far as to ban his Libsyn from their systems, they'd still be able to listen, for free, on Spotify. Even if they did that weird action, people would be able to listen from any number of podcatchers. It's meaningless.
        • darebak 5y ago
          Until private companies decide to remove some individual from payment processing services, and private cloud providers stopped hosting their content and so on. When nearly everything is private, so is censorship.
          • awb 5y ago
            That’s a slippery slope argument. We also break up monopolies, so no one company can control the fate of their consumers, partners, contractors, etc. I’m sure you’ve seen the signs at local shops saying they reserve the right to refuse service to anyone. It’s an inconvenience if you get kicked out but you don’t have a right to the provider of your choosing in the US unless you were denied solely based on your status in a “protected class” (race, gender, over 65, etc.). It’s the free market at work and if it’s not working other solutions will pop up if there’s enough demand.
  • cma 5y ago
    The web is mostly unusable without censoring spam.
    • kordlessagain 5y ago
      And Joe Rohan isn’t a book, or a library. He’s a personality, a bit like an animated gif.
  • Kye 5y ago
    Joe Rogan's perception troubles come from having little in the way of standards. He'll have on Penn Jillette one day, then someone who thinks Penn Jillette is a self-censoring, goose-stepping, party line fascist for making his podcast intro nonbinary-inclusive. It's ideological whiplash to someone who observes through an ideological lens. If you want to really 100% understand where someone you don't otherwise like or agree with is coming from, then three or more unedited hours of that person essentially talking without interruption is a great service. Personally, I haven't found that useful. The summary usually matches the expansion. Tim Pool (for example) made a good point or two that time he was on with the Twitter people, but it didn't meaningfully change what I think of him.
  • deleted 5y ago
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  • ProofByAccident 5y ago
    >If you, a consumer, are making the decision then it's not censorship. If some company, government, organization, school, etc is making the decision then it is censorship. That seems too strong, what about curation or editorial discretion? The NYT deciding not to publish my op-ed screed about the lizard people isn't censorship, it's just how you run a good news agency.
  • awb 5y ago
    Ok, at some point we’re the boy who cried wolf with shouting “Censorship!” at everything. > Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship “Suppress” is different from “restrict”. Suppression is “ to end or stop (something) by force” or “ to keep (something) secret : to not allow people to know about or see (something)” https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/suppress https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/suppress Please, let’s use “censorship” as the word was intended: to mean the total restriction of content. That’s why it’s usually governments who do it. Private companies can typically only do it if they have the exclusive rights to something and refuse to publish it. If someone is dropped from a platform, they’ve been de-platformed but by no definition of the word have they been censored. In order for Spotify to actually “censor” Rogan they would have to not publish his content while also not allowing it to be distributed in any form, anywhere else, ever. Presumably either party could cancel the contract and then Rogan would have numerous other platforms to publish on. So in some sense Rogan is self-censoring at best if he continues to honor his Spotify contract. Also, his podcast is only 1 medium. He could presumably still publish short form video/audio content outside of Spotify, or publish a book without their consent with any content of his choosing. Censorship by the definition of the word would mean banning content across all mediums, which Spotify does not have the authority to do. In any event, if he really wants to share information with the public Spotify alone cannot censor him and prevent him from doing that. All they can do is restrict access to his podcast. In this scenario, I think “restrict” or “inhibit” are more accurate and less provocative descriptions of what could happen.
    • skissane 5y ago
      > Please, let’s use “censorship” as the word was intended: to mean the total restriction of content. In a faraway land, a new law has just been enacted: all public criticism of the government is now a crime. However, the law contains an exception – it will not apply in designated Official Government Criticism Zones, which will be established in convenient locations throughout the country. Would you say that, since government-critical content is not being totally restricted – it will remain legally permitted in government-designated locations – it isn't being censored?
  • carapace 5y ago
    I was a fan of Joe Rogan going back to News Radio. The thing that turned me off him was seeing a clip where he's hanging out with this other comedian (I forget the guy's name) who is boasting about how he used to deny female comedians stage time at a comedy club he managed unless they gave him a blowjob. Rogan's laughing at this in the clip. That's "genuinely creepy" in my view.
    • slibhb 5y ago
      I wouldn't say I'm a fan, frankly I do not understand how people can sit through 3 hour interviews. He's just clearly a nice guy who means well, he's not dangerous or extreme, and his vibe is very anti-establishment.
      • deleted 5y ago
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    • darebak 5y ago
      That's a bit, it didn't actually happen, like most bits that comedians perform.
      • carapace 5y ago
        I'd love to believe that, I'd be glad to find out I was mistaken. Do you have a link to, like, a video of Joe Rogan or Joey Diaz (I looked it up) saying that it was a bit? The search results I'm getting are all media outrage pieces.
• RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y ago
  > Suppose I choose to personaly "censor" and stop paying attention to Facebook, Whatsapp, Twitter, reddit and that crappy podcast on Spotify, after I understand they're just cesspools of ignorance, childish memes and tribalism. There are a lot of stuff that is ok for you to do personally, but that large companies doing at scale becomes problematic. For example, you do facial recognition every day. As you walk through the store, you recognize friends and people you have met before. However, if a company sent bots with facial recognition everywhere, that would be problematic. I would also bet that your close friends and people you invite into your home, tilt very heavily toward the same racial background and sociology-economic status as you. That may be ok for you, is very problematic for a large company. In the same way, you “censoring” something is not a big deal. You can also ban entire authors from your home and it still would not be a big deal. But when a large multibillion dollar company with millions to billions of users does it, it is a big deal.
• verisimi 5y ago
  You're not censoring anything - you're exercising your judgement. Who would have a problem with that? Not me! But, have you ever been convinced about something, and then changed your mind? I have. In order for that to happen (a change of mind) it is useful to have full/better information available. But if there are forces at play (eg coordinated FAANG efforts, see Alex Jones) to supress information, the possibility of finding that information is removed. You are making reasonable decisions, but you do not have the full facts. You do not even know that you don't have the full facts. This is not a good state to be in! The messy noise is not a bad thing. Even if you want to stick to what you know, others will trawl through that information and will uncover some gems. I mean, its not like governments and corporations don't conspire together for whatever purposes. They plainly do and we see evidence this with lobbyists, pre-prepared bills waiting for the right moment, the well-emunerated advisory roles provided to ex-politicians, etc. The point I am trying to make, is that whatever your position is, you want all information to be free and for people to exercise their judgement. Reason will prevail. But de-platforming, etc is terrible! Don't plead to be kept in the dark by the government!
  • awb 5y ago
    > whatever your position is, you want all information to be free and for people to exercise their judgement. Reason will prevail. Sounds like a simple solution, but I don’t know of any country that has 100% access to all information, so I don’t think anyone has been able to test your theory throughout history. I’d argue that a large minority of people are highly persuadable and not near the unbiased, logical arbiters required to have an ideal outcome when presented with information. You can see this in the misinterpretation of valid information and the consumption and retention of misinformation. So, 1) I don’t think the human condition is as ideal as you describe where reason always prevails. Also, most people agree that some content is too dangerous to disseminate, like content that can be used to create great harm or destruction. Like, blueprints for WMDs, or maybe content about how to breach security at a nuclear facility, or how to hack power plants, etc. So 2) there’s a line somewhere about what content is safe for the general public to consume but I don’t know any country or person that thinks it’s at 100%. So now the question becomes not if we should draw a line at all, but where to draw the line on what content is beneficial to the public.
• flutas 5y ago
  > where all opinions are valid I think a good point to make regarding this is that no opinion can ever be valid or invalid. Facts can be valid or invalid, and must be supported by evidence to be valid, but opinions just exist. One can be proven, the other can't. You can personally think someone's opinion is stupid, or amazing, or whatever adjective you want to throw in, but it can never be "valid" or "invalid." Saying someone has an "invalid" opinion is just joining into the tribalism that people so love. I personally try to ignore most people's opinions just to "filter out the noise" as you said. I try to drill into the facts, but that can be very challenging, because even factually accurate data can be misrepresented into an opposite opinion.
  • ehnto 5y ago
    Perhaps not valid or invalid, but surely an opinion can vary in value to you personally, perhaps even in value to society. An opinion from a stranger on the internet, is of fairly low value, because you can't determine what weight to put behind that individuals opinion. You don't know if they've been thinking about this problem for months, or if they just clanged together an opinion right then and there, or if their opinion was fed to them via some youtuber they watch, or any other number of ways people come to an opinion. Whereas with books and even people within your community, it's usually a lot easier to discern or research whether or not their opinion was derived from great thought, facts and experience. I will value the opinions in a book about engineering from the chief mechanic of an F1 team for example, there's reason to think they've given the topic a great deal of attention.
    • flutas 5y ago
      > Perhaps not valid or invalid, but surely an opinion can vary in value to you personally, perhaps even in value to society. Fully agree. I just get tired of seeing people claim that someone's opinion is wrong because they have some other view point that contradicts their opinion. People also intentionally blur the lines to try and get support for their argument, to me claiming valid/invalid on an opinion is one of the methods I see fairly often.
  • jacobr1 5y ago
• tablespoon 5y ago
  >> The prophetic accuracy of Bradbury’s work is evident in the recent controversy over Joe Rogan’s podcast. > My point is: selecting quality is not "censorship" it is mental hygiene. Bad discussions and bad ideas should really be discarded. When you tune out from a creationist, anti-vaxer, flat-earth prophet or global warming denier you are selecting for quality. I strongly agree, generally. And I'm not a Rogan fan and I don't listen to his podcast. However, it's also important to keep in mind that in some cases it's easy to confuse quality for ideological compatibility. So you may think you're selecting for quality when you're actually selecting for things that just reinforce your beliefs. As a kind of relevant aside, I think it's also important to distinguish "seeking the ultimate, correct truth" from "making a timely, reasonable decision." Specifically with a lot of COVID stuff, I think a lot of people have gotten hung up the former in ways that undermine the latter, when the latter is actually the more important thing at this moment.
• jules 5y ago
  Choosing to not consume or disseminate a piece of content is not censorship. Censorship is when you attempt to make that choice for somebody else.