Fortunately Rogan is still as free as ever to publish these episodes in any other venue, but Spotify (like any publisher) reserves the right to host (or not) whatever content it wants. This isn't an infringement on anyone's speech, so hopefully "pro-speech" people (interesting false dichotomy you've struck between this group and "anti-Rogan" people) are just as happy as they were yesterday.
EDIT: A lot of reflexive comments here very quickly assuming this is about removing Rogan's COVID-sensitive content, but looking at the list of removed episodes and how many guests are the subjects of serious sexual allegations, people might want to consider who they're actually defending here.
It's hilarious to me how every time this "free speech" "discussion" comes up, it inevitably leads to "people not wanting to associate with me or listen to me speak is denying my free speech".
The primary issue is being uncomfortable with other people making free associations (Rogan and his audience). One's product being carried in the same store as someone else's product is a tenuous "association" at best.
Don't get me wrong, freedom cuts both ways; some hindrances to free speech are perfectly legal, and would ironically be violations of the First Amendment to prevent! But let's not pretend that these kinds of boycotts are simple discomfort or preference: they're an attempt to change what is permissible to say, because "won't somebody think of the children?"
I don't understand why that's a problem to some people. Isn't the whole point of the "free market" that I'm allowed to cancel my subscription if I disagree with whatever Spotify is doing?
From my perspective it is a very obvious double standard when people consider not wanting Spotify to air anti-trans rhetoric an attack on free speech, but calling the acceptance of trans people a sign of societal collapse is not a problem at all.
Is it not a form of censorship when someone tries every tactic in the book to discredit a group of people to an audience of millions?
> calling the acceptance of trans people a sign of societal collapse
> tries every tactic in the book to discredit a group of people
At the risk of taking the bait: this is clear evidence you've never listened to the show. If you want to take issue with his specific opinions on trans women in fighting sports, or specific choices of guests, fair enough; but the "guilt by association" and "indictment by meme" is exactly why we all benefit from free and open discourse, including being tolerant and charitable to opposing views. Witness the "cancellations" of trans-ally voices like ContraPoints or Lindsay Ellis (the latter of whom was so traumatized that she quit YouTube permanently).
If you want to draw a line somewhere, and withdraw your participation by boycott, or even ostracize other participants, that's your right; but don't pretend you're not attempting to influence societal discourse, and prevent third-party conversations and associations.
You are free to associate/disassociate with whoever you want. When you pressure other entities to associate/dissociate with someone according to your preferences, that's a free speech issue.
People keep saying this but Neil Young and the others never pressured Spotify to do anything about Rogan or anything else. His statement was very clear, he didn't want the association and wanted his music removed.
If he had just quietly pulled his music, I would agree. But since he made a public show about it, its clear the purpose is to exert pressure on Spotify and/or to encourage others to also pull their music to force Spotify to change their policy on Rogan.
Making a public show to exert pressure is an act of free speech. Just because someone doesn't agree with the intent or consequences doesn't make it not a speech act.
The issue isn't whether Neil Young's speech act was in accordance with free speech--it was. The issue is whether his speech act was indented to curtail the speech of another--it was. These claims are not in contradiction.
This logic very quickly crumbles when you are confronted with the fact that Joe Rogan saying trans people are the downfall of "western society" is also intended to curtail the speech of another.
It's almost as if free speech absolutism alone isn't a complete and consistent framework. Deciding that speech acts which call for the curtailment free speech are permissible makes the system inconsistent. And deciding that those speech acts lies outside of the system in which they are constructed makes the system incomplete.
> When you pressure other entities to associate/dissociate with someone according to your preferences, that's a free speech issue.
That's not a 'free speech issue,' that's free speech in action. Until the government is punishing someone for their speech, everyone has and is using free speech.
If you want to see actual free speech issues, look at the anti-BDS laws[1].
Free speech isn't limited to legal matters. It is an ideal. If you pressure someone not to associate with others then you are intentionally taking action with the intent to suppress speech. That is anti free speech. There is simply no way around that.
The US affords protections against the government infringing your speech, but not (generally) against private parties doing so.
To put it bluntly, cancel culture is anti free speech by definition.
> To put it bluntly, cancel culture is anti free speech by definition.
Trying to duck consequences by crying 'cancel culture' is itself an attempt to stifle speech. When consumers protest a business, they're using speech, not 'pressure,' because in that context 'pressure' isn't a real thing. There's government action against a business, and there's plain old real world consequences.
>When consumers protest a business, they're using speech, not 'pressure,' because in that context 'pressure' isn't a real thing.
This isn't true in the age of social media. A relatively small protest (i.e. not large enough to register on their financials) can create a disproportionate amount of bad press which can exert pressure on a company to act. Manipulating social media algorithms to surface your grievance to the top of the trending list is a kind of pressure.
> A relatively small protest (i.e. not large enough to register on their financials) can create a disproportionate amount of bad press which can exert pressure on a company to act.
I don't see how this different from a 'relatively small protest' in front of a company HQ getting into the traditional press. If your protest is enough to activate the 'hot' algorithm, so be it. That's not manipulating social media, that's just how social media works. Trying to stifle that kind of protest is the same kind of 'censorship' that's being complained about here.
Furthermore, if it's enough to cause a company to act, it's 100% because it's large enough to register on their financials in some form.
>I don't see how this different from a 'relatively small protest' in front of a company HQ getting into the traditional press.
Social media makes it different. Social media turns intensity of belief into the appearance of large numbers. Networks of like-minded individuals are mobilized to present a consistent message to some entity. This gives the appearance of high motivation and a large representative sample, when in reality it is neither. Social media protests incur zero cost to participate and are non-representative. The engagement algorithms and the built-in network dynamics eliminates traditional barriers to protesting and do much of the work of creating these frequent uproars.
I used the term manipulation because the dynamic brought out through social media is fundamentally dependent on social media.
>Furthermore, if it's enough to cause a company to act, it's 100% because it's large enough to register on their financials in some form.
Being fearful of financial backlash doesn't entail that the actual real-world backlash would be significant. The fact that social media eliminates the cost to participate in these "protests" suggests that when participation has actual costs it will be greatly reduced.
>When you pressure other entities to associate/dissociate with someone according to your preferences, that's a free speech issue.
That's free speech. As long as no one is being coerced through violence, attempting to influence someone's opinion and convince them to associate or disassociate with someone is clearly free speech. Hell, it describes most political speech and a lot of journalism.
> > When you pressure other entities to associate/dissociate with someone according to your preferences, that's a free speech issue.
> That's free speech.
Yes, speaking to someone in an attempt to pressure them not to speak to someone else is indeed a form of speech. However, the things you are expressing (ie attempting to pressure them) is an active attempt to curtail someone else's speech. So you are using your speech in an attempt to curtail someone else's speech.
> As long as no one is being coerced through violence, attempting to influence someone's opinion and convince them to associate or disassociate with someone is clearly free speech.
No one claimed otherwise. It is clearly legal to do so. It is also clearly an anti free speech sort of thing to do.
>Yes, speaking to someone in an attempt to pressure them not to speak to someone else is indeed a form of speech.
No, it isn't merely a form of speech. It's free speech. It's just as free as any other kind of speech. Free speech allows for conflict with speech, and it doesn't guarantee all speech all possible platforms.
You don't get to decide that only the speech you agree with gets to be free, but speech that disagrees with that doesn't.
As a free speech absolutist, I will never stop someone from saying that free speech should be curtailed. To do so would be antithetical the the principle of free speech.
So if I insult and berate you at a party, and you choose to go home after seeing that the host won't intervene, you're the one who's against free speech?
Insulting and berating has a somewhat threatening connotation to me and so I think isn't even a remotely accurate analogy.
Say Bob and Sue are at the party talking about some topic you don't approve of. They aren't talking to you, just each other. You request that the host remove them. The host refuses. So you attempt to get other people to very vocally leave the place in order to pressure the host to kick Bob and Sue out.
> So you attempt to get other people to very vocally leave the place
So...exercising your free speech to convince other people to exercise their free speech? Sounds like lots of free speech to me.
It's up to the host whose presence they value more. They can always decide you're an irritating busybody and no one wants your negativity killing the vibe.
Free speech is about GOVERNMENT interference. You seem to have that confused with the free market, or perhaps just confused by social consequences of anti-social behavior.
You're confusing free speech with the first amendment. When Voltaire wrote about freedom of speech he wasn't referring to the US government. It's a universal principle.
>Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
I think it is reasonable to assume that when the vast majority of Americans refer to "free speech" they are making reference to the Bill of Rights and the First amendment. Unfortunately, most people don't seem to understand that, with regards to speech, the 1st amendment is only about preventing government from curtailing speech. It doesn't say any private individual or company has to allow all speech.
I don't think anyone claimed that a government protection was being violated. It's you that saw "free speech" and apparently assumed that meant the first amendment and the US government.
There are ways in which I can legally attempt to suppress the speech of others, for example I could threaten to evict guests from my home if they bring up certain topics. That is clearly an action which goes against the principles of freedom of speech but it is not a violation of any of the protections provided by the US government.
Whether such an action on my part is morally justified will be highly context dependent. For example, perhaps I don't want certain topics discussed in front of my children in my own home?
Suppressing Joe Rogan is an organization expressing their free speech rights. Or perhaps you think organizations don’t have the right to control what is on their platform?
Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
"Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."
Imagine you have gym membership. The Gym is OK but the equipment isn't always maintained and the staff are underpaid. One day you come in and dead centre is a brand new expensive and loud fart machine. You decide this is too much and join a different gym. How is this "silencing" Joe Rogan?
Those people are choosing to disassociate with a platform because they believe it is choosing to host harmful misinformation. Agree or disagree with that opinion, you suggesting it is wrong to do that in the name of free speech seems hypocritical.
People aren't mad Spotify is hosting Rogan; they're mad that Spotify gave him 100m to be the exclusive distributor of his crap.
I don't get why people keep trying to turn this into a free speech issue. It's not. I stopped giving Spotify money because they're going to turn around and use it to fund thinga I disagree with. So I guess people are just arguing against capitalism?
You're right, unfortunately I fell prey to the same knee-jerk instinct that I'm calling out! It would've been more accurate for me to say he's free to publish these views in any other avenue, if not the episodes.
Is he though? I suspect Spotify owns the rights to those episodes and to his show, so I doubt he is free to publish these views in another avenue. Spotify wouldn't pay $100M and not contractually lock up all of those rights.
It's meaningless to speculate but I doubt Spotify can stop Joe Rogan from repeating any of the assertions made in his podcasts on, say, Twitter, or at live events, or in a bar. In terms of whether this is an issue of freedom of speech, the point is he has the same rights as he had yesterday.
Yes it was exclusive, but I wonder if the exclusivity applies for episodes Spotify decides not to host/publish. I would imagine there has to be a usage clause in the exclusivity deal which reverts rights back to Rogan if Spotify doesn't publish the JRE in part or whole.
Heidegger was a member of the Nazi party; Simone be Beauvoir was banned from teaching for molesting her students [1]; and Foucault may have molested children [2], and certainly he advocated for the right to have sex with minors [3]. The publisher's of these philosophers are private companies so why don't we wage a twitter campaign against them until they stop publishing these racists and sexual predators.
EDIT: A lot of reflexive comments here very quickly assuming this is about removing Rogan's COVID-sensitive content, but looking at the list of removed episodes and how many guests are the subjects of serious sexual allegations, people might want to consider who they're actually defending here.