I’m struggling to have sympathy with anyone involved in this. Podcasting has always felt like a resurgence of the “original web” spirit to me: anyone can upload, anywhere. All you need is an RSS feed and anyone can subscribe.
Then Spotify came busting in and decided that the open podcasting platform is obsolete and paid Joe Rogan $100 million for exclusive distribution of his content. So they’ve dug their own grave here.
Rogan has too. He didn’t have to take the deal that removed his podcast from open distribution and put it under corporate control. But he did. And he paved the way for many others to go down the same path and erode the open podcasting ecosystem. If he hadn’t done it he’d have none of these problems. So he’s dug his own grave too.
I wish both parties nothing but the best in digging their way out of the mess they created for themselves.
It's likely Rogan would have been banned from YouTube and Apple Podcasts had he not moved to Spotify. He could have moved to tiny platforms like Odysee or Rokfin that would likely have poor retention rates, or just relied on people adding his URL manually to Apple Podcasts, but come on. Nobody would do that.
The "death of the open web" problem isn't creators somehow consistently choosing to empower companies that keep hurting them. Users are doing that, and creators follow.
Imagine Tim Ferriss gets banned from all "non-open web" platforms today: podcast app indexes, Google Search, Twitter, Facebook, Spotify. We'll imagine he gets banned for zero reason: did nothing wrong, did nothing different, isn't any intrinsically less relevant or popular than he was yesterday. What's left is his website (if you remember the URL), and newsletter if you're already subscribed. You can add his podcast URL to your podcast app, but his podcast doesn't appear in Search. How much of his reach does he lose, overnight? 50%? 75%?
Google Search isn't the "open web", and if they don't list you, you don't exist. How can one creator fix that?
> or just relied on people adding his URL manually to Apple Podcasts, but come on. Nobody would do that.
You mean by clicking a link on his website?
How likely is it that google would block joe rogan's website from search results for joe rogan?
I feel like people keep dodging a central issue here - joe rogan is not an independent being silenced on the open web by centralized platforms - he effectively sold the show to one of the platforms. They decide what happens with it (specifics of the terms of their agreement notwithstanding).
this isn't the first controversial audio programming on the internet, but it is the first one that is effectively owned by one of the listening platforms that actually has the power to do something without wading into unfathomably complicated waters, if they want to. that they (until today?) seemed not to want to - or to pretend that their relationship to the show is the same as twitter's relationship to me - is what is keeping this in the news.
To be 100% clear - it's not obvious to me what anyone should do in this case; joe, spotify, etc. I have my own opinions about the cost / benefit on the content but I also know enough to expect that things are probably more complicated than the popular narrative I have access to.
What I do know for sure is that Joe would have more control of his show's destiny, not less, if he had decided to keep distributing in a way that did not give a single entity complete control over whether a given piece of content could be distributed at all.
> or just relied on people adding his URL manually to Apple Podcasts, but come on. Nobody would do that
But why would nobody do that? How hard is it? Maybe it's too much trouble for something you don't care about, but for a content you enjoy, doing one copy-paste isn't very difficult?
Personally I resent Spotify for the whole move to podcasts.
There is still so much to do with music (streaming quality, music videos, lyrics, chords...)
Instead they choose to publish recordings of guys talking -- not experts in any subject, but random guys who are pretty ignorant of everything, and who, because they don't know anything, tend to have a very political conversation. This isn't art. This is just another way of wasting time.
As a result, Spotify is now in the business of policing content. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
> There is still so much to do with music (streaming quality, music videos, lyrics, chords...)
Correct, but:
1. Everyone wants to be the Netflix of podcasts.
2. It's premium advertising real estate. The ad formats you can chuck into a podcast have higher CPM.
Caveat re 2.: I'm not sure how much advertising contributes to Spotify revenue, so take this one with a grain of salt. It used to be the next hot thing in adtech when I worked in the industry before 2021.
Remember: why charge the user directly, when you can charge them indirectly using a bunch of random middlemen (DAAST, VAST, potato, potahtoh)!
> Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
Example of a slightly less stupid* game: The Apple Podcasts app. The UX is mediocre, but the ability to pay for series/bundles is something I'd like to see more. Just let me pay for the content.
As much as podcast content can be decoupled from the user agent, I'd like to see the same done with payments.
> 2. It's premium advertising real estate. The ad formats you can chuck into a podcast have higher CPM.
Not for long. I'm already starting to skip algorithmically inserted ads in podcasts because they're annoying claptrap like terrestrial radio ads. Adtech companies don't just come along and "use" ad space. They actively ruin its original value with their tactics.
I remember a few years ago that Spotify made a big deal about "not censoring explicit songs" and not even giving me the option, so if I had music playing randomly at some point it would blast out some curse-laden song while I'm driving with the kids.
I'm far more concerned with the terrible search function which puts all sorts of user created crap at the top that pretends to be what it's not, rather than album names.
Not sure if I agree that being exposed to explicit content sometimes as a child is on the same level of damage as constant vaccine misinformation/disinformation.
Does Spotify require you to listen to podcasts? Not sure why your angry that a streaming company would expand into another genre without getting your stamp of approval for what the podcasts discuss and the qualifications of the podcasters. Seems like a perfectly reasonable business move to target curious listeners.
By the way, based on your standards main stream news and most media content should be discouraged. The vast majority of it is “guys talking -- not experts in the [any] subject, but random guys who are pretty ignorant.”
You're right, I don't care much for mainstream news either, especially pundits who are just noise making machines with zero added value.
But yes, as a user and subscriber, Spotify's business decisions matter to me. Because of their decision to host podcasts, which are low-content content and have nothing to do with music, I can't listen to artists who choose to dissociate themselves with that.
So, why aren’t people more upset about mainstream news putting out blathering nonsense in 2-3 minute sound bytes about the same topics almost verbatim. Instead, there is an uproar over a podcaster that releases long interviews of people across many subjects (including controversial ones). We should be encouraging more discourse like we see on Rogan’s podcast, not berating it, especially if you prefer deeper discussion without fear of backlash by “squeaky wheel” personalities like Neil Young. Keep on rocking in the free world!
I don't have a problem with Joe Rogan. I never listened to any of his podcasts. He can say what he wants any way he wants. I don't care.
I have a problem with a service that I thought was all about music, hosting talk shows -- and talk shows that are US-centric, and controversial -- because as a consequence, said service becomes involved in a myriad of controversies and serves less music.
Of course I don't control what Spotify does; I will simply need to take my business elsewhere. It's not the end of the world; but it's annoying.
Understood. Yours is a consumer choice, not a political one. I have no problem with more content, but I do have a problem with algorithms and apps pushing content to me that ignores my preferences and/or ability to customize my searches for new content. This is an implementation detail though, not an issue with content I may dislike or not agree with.
I'm mad at Spotify because their recommendations used to be great.
Now the home page is a bunch of podcasts they're trying to get me to listen to. Even though I've never listened to a single podcast through them.
It's really annoying that recommendations, which are the primary reason I use Spotify, have gotten worse, and the UI has gotten worse, and I now have to scroll past podcasts just to get to music. I cancelled my account because of it.
> Spotify is NOT the open web. Rogan can host the audio files on his own site. That’s the open web.
I know. My point is that he can do that, and he'd lose most of his reach. Or he can keep his reach, by staying on the big (closed web) platforms, and be at these corporations' mercy. Users have been trained: they want to watch videos, they open youtube.com, maybe TikTok, and start clicking and scrolling. Most people won't expand the effort to keep up with you if you're not on the big (closed web) platforms, who have effectively taken over the web and discoverability of content.
It's like Cloudflare's free speech argument: if you're big and controversial, you essentially need DDoS protection, meaning you're dependent on the goodwill of a few big corporations. From their corporate blog[0]:
> Increasing Dependence On A Few Giant Networks
> In a not-so-distant future, if we're not there already, it may be that if you're going to put content on the Internet you'll need to use a company with a giant network like Cloudflare, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, or Alibaba [to prevent being taken down].
> For context, Cloudflare currently handles around 10% of Internet requests.
> Without a clear framework as a guide for content regulation, a small number of companies will largely determine what can and cannot be online.
"if you're big and controversial, you essentially need DDoS protection, meaning you're dependent on the goodwill of a few big corporations."
How is this any different than in the analogue world? If you want to rage against "the system" in a local bar or in your living room with a few of your friends, nobody is going to bother you. If you have a large following, you are likely to face counter-speech or even moral suasion by others who don't like what they are hearing.
So, basically rather than the old culture of free speech, what we have now is:
You're free to speak, but as speech is centralized on private platforms, they get to make sure that nobody will ever hear you. This is good (tm).
And the American left, the ones who used to fight for free speech are perfectly fine with this, so long as they own the platforms. After all, the boot of authoritarianism is fine when you're the one wearing it.
First, speech is not wholly "centralized" on private platforms. The purpose of platforms is to provide a centralized service for content, but platforms don't have the power to eliminate alternate forums for speech. There aren't Spotify brownshirts burning down indie music labels and shaking down local bands that don't sign up, or showing up at random doors to bother individuals who refuse to tune in.
Second, the idea that platforms are reacting to public opinion precisely goes against the idea of authoritarianism.
If we're going down this path -- why don't we talk about talk radio in the US, which is essentially a precusor to Joe Rogan style content and is dominated by right-wing shock jocks. Does the absolute dominance of the right wing on talk radio and the absence of left-wing content mean that there is no free speech? Or I guess to take it to the level of your dystopian fantasy, should we live in a world where cars are programmed to require the listener to listen to talk radio and prevent anyone in cars from turning off the dial?
>First, speech is not wholly "centralized" on private platforms. The purpose of platforms is to provide a centralized service for content, but platforms don't have the power to eliminate alternate forums for speech. There aren't Spotify brownshirts burning down indie music labels and shaking down local bands that don't sign up, or showing up at random doors to bother individuals who refuse to tune in.
Oh no, 99% of communication is on private platforms, surely this mean that topical discourse is extremely free as you can always scream into the void.
Pardon my sarcasm, but Freedom of Speech is fundamentally tied to the right to be (reasonably) heard as otherwise you'd have freedom of speech in almost every dystopian setting, provided nobody else hears you.
The reality of the situations is that these private platforms are the public squares of today, and like it or not, they represent the vast majority of communications. As such, the ability to censor across these platforms is vastly more powerful than any private censorship due to it's lack of constraints.
>Talk radio
Are there significant barriers to a left wing talk radio show? From what I understand, the issue isn't in institutional barriers, but instead a lack of a market. However, we've very much seen the inverse for right-wing platform, with anything from payment processors to cloudflare and other core infrastructural components locking them out.
Even better, your horrendous strawman of the cars which force said show upon listener neglects the fact that the Spotify user, if he wishes not to listen to Joe Rogan can... just not hit the play button?
> Pardon my sarcasm, but Freedom of Speech is fundamentally tied to the right to be (reasonably) heard
At least in small-l Enlightment liberalism, there is no such "right to be heard" except in the context that people have a right to petition and speak out against the government. You can't compel an audience -- this is why there is a corrolary freedom of association.
I agree with you that what tends to foster healthy social relations and civil society is where there are social norms that encourage debate and opportunities for people from different backgrounds and experiences to interact.
There's a lot of scholarship on that topic and where those spaces exist there are freedoms associated with them, but I think it would be extreme to say that people have a right to an audience.
>The reality of the situations is that these private platforms are the public squares of today, and like it or not, they represent the vast majority of communications.
Internet platforms are a cheap imitation of the town square and I don't see why we should effectively compel speech in order to maintain something like this. Even talk radio is closer to the public square in that much of the programming is live and they take (curated) calls from the listening audience.
The Internet has failed as a viable alternative for the public sphere for a number of predictable reasons. If your argument is that we should have a public square where ideas are openly contested, it's far easier to do that when the decisions are made locally in a manner that's closer to the public.
>Are there significant barriers to a left wing talk radio show? From what I understand, the issue isn't in institutional barriers, but instead a lack of a market.
Talk radio used to be closer to a public square but due to consolidation of local stations under basically a couple of owners starting in the 1980's, right wing shock jocks dominate the schedule. So, to the extent that there isn't a "market," it's for the reason you complain about regarding tech platforms and the result has been the absolute opposite of your complaint -- right wing speech is constantly present there. And frankly, take a look at tech platforms and you'll see that there are huge volumes of right wing content.
>However, we've very much seen the inverse for right-wing platform, with anything from payment processors to cloudflare and other core infrastructural components locking them out.
Those platforms are the opposite of a public square where ideology is contested rather than explicitly defined.
To directly address your point -- a lot of those were shut down for reasons beyond their politics. You can find any number of expressly right wing forums and websites on the Internet. As I've pointed out, talk radio has far more reach and impact than some of these tech platforms for better or worse.
I think you misunderstand what I mean when I say: "the open web is dead". Its reach is dead.
Previously, the "open web" was all there was, before the online walled gardens. Users were trained to get information that way. Now that traffic's been captured by the walled gardens that optimize for engagement. There's a reason Google Reader died, Google stated it: "declining use and relevance".
Going viral is essential to growing an audience. TikTok, YouTube, and Twitter offer that. The open web doesn't.
> Previously, the "open web" was all there was, before the online walled gardens.
This is revisionist bullshit. Before Facebook et al AOL was the major walled garden. After AOL's star began to fade they and everyone else focused on becoming "homepages" with integrated search. They even provided helpful search toolbars! Social media is just the latest walled garden on the web.
Don't pretend the majority of web users have ever been bravely exploring the corners of every dark nook of the web. The majority has always been on some curated site with little deviation.
My comment is just as germane to your clarification of your position. If you were to say that the open web has been overshadowed or marginalized, I would concur.
No, growing an audience of millions of people might necessitate going viral. Plenty of people are happy to have a very small, but tight knit community in their own little corner of the open web.
> My point is that he can do that, and he'd lose most of his reach.
But he already had massive reach, that’s why Spotify paid $100 million. If his fans can be relied upon to sign up for Spotify and enter their credit card details you can bet they can be relied upon to click a link on a web page.
I know it’s a weak analogy but look at something like Wordle. It’s not on Steam, or in the App Store. It’s just a web page and it spread like wildfire despite what users are supposedly “trained” to do. We’re not giving people enough credit.
> My point is that he can do that, and he'd lose most of his reach.
And? If a company spends money building a platform, including infrastructure, they can host whatever they want on it. They also don't need to host what they don't want. It doesn't matter if it's a hosting service or search engine or just a simple directory of links. No one owes anyone else their audience.
You're complaining that people might need to do work to get an audience.
> I know. My point is that he can do that, and he'd lose most of his reach.
Maybe if he was starting out. At this point his audience would follow him. That's not to mention that while he was a "traditional" podcast anyone could just add his RSS feed and listen. Indeed many of his listeners did just that before the Spotify deal. We're not yet at the point where client software is filtering content for us.
Right? I mean, good lord the amount of blabbering that end runs the obvious is annoying. Setup your own. Move on.
Maybe Joe's bigger problem is he talks too much. He ought to spend time thinking about his business not seeing himself as a celebrity. You know, in a lot of places, stupidity is not well tolerated.
And Joe? Maybe think about something to say. Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr (boxer eg Ali), MLK, Federal papers, Shakespeare, Voltaire are remembered. In the daily spoken world, you'll accumulate many data points. Eventually turn to analysis, reflection, meaning.
Cause if you don't? I can still go back to the good guys above or merely talk to your guests myself. And we'll move on.
That's like saying you should divorce after the first fight or argument. A contract has been signed for a lot of money, 2 years a business relationship has been working fine for both parties and then the shit storm happens. You think all the talk right now is because he sees himself as a celebrity? Or because it makes no rational sense to just completely end his ties with spotify or for spotify to end their ties with him at the first signs of pressure from the social justice machine?
The net is open if you have know-how beyond booking guest talent oneself or through a 3rd party e.g. booking agent if you understand something about the tech that gets your product out. That was the position I agreed with. Why? 'cause it's right.
The net is open but there's a question of how easy or even if it is possible to gain an audience comparable to what the "closed" web offers. If you don't gain popularity then it is not as easy to get high value guests in the first place because those too may seek a big audience or give more value to venues that offer it so I'm not sure I get what your point is after all.
Dude! Time to grow up. Unidimensional people are boring. You wanna know what? If all Joe can do is yack in the microphone ... Maybe the fact some of his post casts went missing is much Ado about nothing. Wanna also know what? MLK or Ali would figure out how. Maybe Joe or you or both are unmotivated
First you get a company create a large platform that makes it very difficult to for individual people to thrive in the space around it.
Then the large company starts deciding what can or cannot be published, effectively making it impossible for some people to even be present in that space.
Now, imagine the same happens for every possible space you could use to contact other people. Videos, podcasts, have a web page searchable on search engines, tweet, instant messaging, and so on and on. You are effectively excluded because your views do not match mainstream or touch controversial or taboo subjects.
I may not agree with Rogan or other people that are being excluded but that does not necessarily give me right to decide whether they shouldn't be heard by other people.
I strongly believe this is where judicial system is supposed to represent us to follow laws to judge which instances of speech are and which are not lawful.
What we have now is effectively mob rule.
Imagine some people win and decide that talking about racism should quieted down. Is it that hard to imagine?
Bait and Switch is the general business model of everything. Do you think next year DoorDash will be as cheap as it was when it first launched? As soon as companies get a decent market share, they start increasing prices. It is silly to complain about bait and switch for hosting content but not about prices.
It would be bait and switch if they changed their terms unilaterally. In this case, they always had the right to remove content from their platform whenever they consider it harmful to their platform.
Win popular approval. In the past it has been shown the popular view to not be the best, what makes you so sure the current trend is perfect and deserves no opposition?
Say you are leader of your tribe and you get bit by a dog. Then you decide all dogs should be removed from your village because dogs caused harm to you.
That's what the current social justice machine looks like to me and I don't think they are right.
I don't know honestly. The details matter.. I wouldn't agree to teach children about the infinite genders one could identify as or promote transitioning to people under 18. But have no problems teaching about standard gay acceptance.
I'm not saying the far right are good either but right now you can't say they have as much an impact on the culture as the far left.
Agreed. That said, no one is an island. A hosting provider, ISP, CDN, even DNS can all decide to make you disappear from the web. Of course, it's a much higher bar than relying on Facebook, Twitter, or Spotify.
What's funny is that Joe Rogan was an active participant on the 'open web'. He had his own a website with a blog and discussion forums, and the podcast started as vlog entries in a text blog.
"Growth" and scale are interesting concerns. Companies, cities, languages, etc that aren't "growing" are considered to be in crisis. You could have a little gig that produces and sells 100 gadgets a month. At $100 per, it's enough to quit your day job. In fact, you're considering hiring some help. Two years later, you're still selling 100 per month and can't figure out what's the problem. Maybe you need to shut it all down.
A podcast with 10,000 listeners? Wow! Who'd have ever thought our little Joey would attract so much interest? Two years later, Joseph Productions is struggling to keep the doors open with only 500,000 listeners.
Back in the day, people found a website by word of mouth and bookmarked it. 100 page views a week was awesome. 1000 a month was maybe even better than all that money spent stuffing mailboxes with flyers. This internet thing has a lot of potential.
Today? If you can't break into the front page of a Google search, what's the point?
An automaker that sells $1 billion of product is in deep trouble because growth is flat. A city that hosts 2 million convention visitors a year is "struggling" and needs a new Chief of Tourism. A town with a population of 10,000 with clean streets and no crime is at a dead end because they don't have a Walmart and can't attract new businesses.
>Money killed (or is in the process of killing) podcasting.
I see a whole lot of podcasts out there. They're mostly either something that someone does on the side either for fun or as part of their jobs or they're ad supported. (Honestly, I'm often a bit surprised that modest advertising supports obviously sizable staffs--even if I'm sure no one is getting rich.)
You’re not wrong. For me, the ads read by the podcasters themselves killed it for me. I really find the idea of “monetizing” every last thing extremely distasteful.
Unfortunately, this is the case. As someone who graduated uni in 1995, I pine (lol) for the days where the internet was largely Usenet, IRC, and email listservs followed by the early days of the web. Social media and especially social media apps on mobile devices completely ruined it.
That can’t possibly be. His audience, like so many other niche groups that gather around conspiracy theories, sure must be the smartest people. They are on to something we, sheeple, haven’t seen yet.
It's also possible to streamline adding the RSS feed by using custom url schemes (at least on iOS). A url like podcast://example.rss will open in Apple Podcasts and other podcast apps offer their own url schemes. This can make it as simple as clicking on a link to subscribe to private feeds.
I still do it to this day. I love being able to go between apps/devices/OSes and subscribe and unsubscribe to any feed at will. Discovery is a bit different, relying on recommendations from friends or referrals from creators I follow. I highly recommended it!
You see quite a bit of mutual backscratching on podcasts as well with some podcasts running guest episodes from other podcasts and so forth. I'm subscribed to far more podcasts than I regularly listen to. Honestly, I don't see discovery as a particular problem. (Standing out from so much material out there can be challenging--but that's got nothing to do with centralized vs. decentralized.)
A tiny sliver of people, relative to the podcast audience size of today, did that. The people who would still do it now is still a tiny sliver of the potential audience.
Heck I do it, but I do it for very few podcasts that I already know I like, mainly because discovery is so awkward.
> adding his URL manually to Apple Podcasts, but come on. Nobody would do that.
This is easy, they just have to put a widget tile the pod love subscribe button on their site, which makes it relatively easy for the user (if they know which podcast app they are using)
Monolithic platforms are dead. More and more creators will take lesson and put their content under their own brand. Youtbe will be just "dump host" embedded from other domain!
How is the open web dead? Are you saying that private companies acting in their benefit hurts the open web? You can still create any website or any content you desire who anyone can access. The open web didn’t provide reach by default. That is why directories sprang up followed by search engines. If anything the open web was easier to navigate 25 years ago and heavily reliant on word of mouth.
> It's likely Rogan would have been banned from YouTube and Apple Podcasts had he not moved to Spotify.
I'm not so sure. Just put the non controversial episodes on YouTube, then link and advertise the "problematic" episodes that are only available on your own platform.
It's worse under the authoritative government where I live. Multiple people including doctors were arrested by police and beaten up in custody for saying online of the dangers of covid in early 2020. And then then in late 2020 these same government organizations were beating people up again for saying online that it wasn't.
Sorry I agree with the overall sentiment that party line can shift with time unpredictably, but who had been banned in early 2020 for supporting masks? As I recall people socially self imposed masks in a matter of just a couple weeks early in the pandemic, in North America at least, and nobody would have been banned for it.
This issue needs thorough investigative work, to reconstruct an objective timeline.
But as far as I remember it, mask wearing was seen first as being something for paranoid conspiracy theorists, then selfish people, then the narrative was reversed.
Experts were invited on primetime TV to say masks are not recommended to the general public.
I distinctly remember arguing with educated people at work, online, with relatives, that masks should be worn in enclosed public places, months deep into the pandemic.
We would see old people, barely managing to walk, not wear masks while going grocery shopping, because government experts told them they didn't need to. All the while China was in total lockdown and victim counts exploding.
I fear most people would prefer to forget because they played a part in it and it makes them feel dumb. We might get collective amnesia, ensuring this part of the story never reaches the history books. We shouldn't be ashamed though, we've all been victims of misinformation and cultish behavior at one point, the important thing is to draw lessons from it.
I remember early on in December 2020? when the first rumblings of some odd disease in wuhan emerged, largely in oddball enclaves like 4chan and some subreddits.
In the right wing circles I was familiar with, they did talk about this, and were basically labelled conspiracy theorists or trolls. Then, if you remember, anti-Asian racists for associating it with China.
Masks were also ridiculed early in the pandemic, where authoritative recommendations were explicitly NOT to wear the mask [1]. Funnily enough, the response in said right-aligned communities was to wear masks. This flipped to opposition once govt recommendation flipped and mandates were implemented.
Oh, very cool, thanks for the link. There is something about human memory, since official stance has been on the side of mask mandate for so long, that makes it harder to remember how it was ever different before. Your link is very helpful
In early 2020, NYC transit operators were barred from wearing masks and the MTA reasoned that there was not federal or state policy at the time recommending mask usage.
At the time, the surgeon general cautioned the general public to stop buying masks because, "they had not been proven effective in preventing the spread of coronavirus."
Exactly. People here vastly overestimate how technical and motivated the average user is.
Trump's banned on practically all platforms. How many of his fans added his RSS to their app? (Wait, they don't use RSS apps). His only platform is now his website, where he publishes blog posts.
Did his fans follow him to the "open web"? Nope.
> Trump’s Website Traffic Dove a Yuge 99% Year Over Year
> DonaldJTrump.com went from 14 million unique visitors in April 2020 to just 161,000 in April 2021
His blog posts are reposted on multiple other platforms. If you can already see all of those posts on your favorite platform, what incentive do you have to visit the actual website?
I know it's a lost battle because anyone whose not a nerd will never care, but I wish we could all just call content that moves to a centralised platform like Spotify an internet talkshow or whatever and leave the word podcast to the people distributing MP3s via RSS.
This is an interesting point. To me, it feels like an old-form talkshow would be radio or TV. Both of these are subject to heavy regulation and corporate gatekeeping. That is much less true for Internet publishing. Although, as Internet publishing becomes more and more centralised, the same regulations and gatekeeping are likely to emerge in similar form.
The only people who think that the medium is the message are people whose focus is studying media, and not messages. Kind of like "to the guy with a hammer everything looks like a nail" type.
Web hosting companies can be pressured into removing domains and hosting.
Companies running mobile App Stores can be forced to remove apps from their platform.
Social media sites are forced to take down content all the time.
This doesn't mean it will be impossible for people to find these types of content but with each level of restriction, the people who are able and willing to go through the pain to get the information will shrink to a point that they hold no power anymore.
The web was "open" because it was rather small and insignificant. Now that it can move markets and decide which way the world power shifts, those who are at risk of losing their power will do everything to control it so that it doesn't happen.
>The worst use of the <BLINK> tag ever was the discussion held in the early days of RSS about escaping HTML in titles, whose attention-grabbing title went something like this: "Hey, what happens when you put a <BLINK> tag in the title???!!!"
>The content of that notorious discussion went on and off and on and off for weeks, giving all the netizens of the RSS community blogosphere terrible headaches, with people's entire blogs disappearing and reappearing every second, until it finally reached a flashing point, when Dave Winer humbly conceded that it wasn't the user's fault for being an idiot, and maybe just maybe there was tiny teeny little design flaw in RSS, and it wasn't actually such a great idea to allow HTML tags in RSS titles.
Also we have user-agents. Our userscripts (& amassed socialized, collective defenses they enable) should help provide us agency, to defend us against hijinx, to give us our own preferred view of systems. The web platform is uniquely able to handle these trivial little harassment cases, in ways far better than conventional software. This is just such a small-minded, speck-of-dust little concern to me, such a minor irrelevant point. Who cares how long & how stupid the thread on blink tag was, or how hyperbolic the lulz were at the time over it- this is easy to fix.
Podcasting not having a specification allows hollowed out soulless corporate ghouls to put any audio series they want online however they want & call it a podcast. Even a flawed, shitty specification at least defines some base idea, creates a general technical terrain that defines the idea. Podcasting got ripped the fuck off by monsters, because it had no specification. Technical cooperation is impossible without defined technical grounds.
Being serious: do you really think a lack of RFC killed RSS? If so, why not submit one now? I feel like RSS could make a serious comeback if given a chance, like built-in browser support for it.
There is another dimension of choice being taken away as well. Spotify doesn't allow users to hide podcasts or rearrange the order in which things appear, so if you are an 18-34 male you have absolutely no choice but to see JRs face presented to you constantly with no way to remove it... It's functionally an unblockable banner ad even though im paying them.
If i had the ability to just not see this podcast at all (like spotify already does for specific songs) i wouldn't have a horse in this race. However, being involuntarily subjected to something has a way of breeding intense dislike that wouldn't otherwise exist.
This is why I cancelled Spotify. I don't use it for podcasts, I prefer to curate them myself. However since they started offering them, I now have thing that I can only describe as "ads" turning up every time I open Spotify.
I started paying for Spotify years ago to remove ads, and now I appear to be paying _and_ getting ads.
> This argument is so tired. You’re saying they have the right to censor, so say it
I think it's just a strange choice of word. Joe Rogan has the right to publish his podcasts uncensored. So he's not really being censored in the "free speech" sense. He still has the freedom to put his content uncensored on the internet for all to listen too if they choose.
Spotify has the right to choose what they publish or don't publish.
I think talking about censorship and free speech seems beyond the point to me, since I don't see any of those rights being taken away. And since I don't see the premise being true, I can't really take seriously the argument.
Instead, if you're just against the people who are saying that Joe Rogan is misleading and being harmful to society, and that by promoting and publishing his content, Spotify is also doing similar harm and thus they choose to boycott the companies products then discuss that. If you think people are making a baseless fuss about the harmful effects of his podcast on society and the efforts to fight COVID then bring that up instead.
> The counter argument is that censorship is bad in all its forms. It’s one I and many others support
I just want to point out that's not a counter-argument, that's a conclusion, and the argument for it is missing. If you want to make a point to the conclusion you need to explain the premise that you use to arrive there.
I don't really agree with the "all censorship is bad" argument either. The counterarguments are too obvious - every viable community on the internet has a moderator team or equivalent. And it isn't really a question of whether this can be done. Spotify have done it and nobody is pointing to a broken law. There isn't anything interesting here legally or technically speaking (and that is proper - Spotify should control what is accessible on Spotify).
The problem here is Spotify are screwing up their editorial responsibilities. Joe Rogan has reached the sort of critical mass where he gets to decide what is in the public's interest to talk about. These faceless censors at Spotify aren't qualified to do that, or qualified to decide what is and isn't misinformation. They are acting foolishly outside their wheelhouse of creating platforms. They are screwing up by taking down interesting and entertaining content, making decisions that is going to get a very large audience upset with them.
They pay Rogan because he is better at this sort of decision than they are. This is a poor follow up.
I agree that many outlets are screwing up their editorial policies, and Spotify definitely doesn't seem to be putting any effort into that regard. But I think Joe Rogan also screwed up his editorial responsibilities to some extent. He said it himself, that he doesn't research the topics beforehand, he just begins thinking about things on the spot as the interview unfolds and that he doesn't present the opposite views or make clear what level of disagreement the topic has.
He seems to have higher standards than conventional news. It is reliatively rare to see Rogan asserting something that he has to know is false (apart from the obvious things like those long-form ads at the start of the podcast).
Going straight to politics, which is what really upsets people about Rogan, the standard here is people who spent multiple years of sustained campaigning confidently speculating that the US president is in league with the Russians. Or people before that who spent years onfidently speculating that the president was a Muslim trying to institute the Sharia in Texas or something crazy like that. I don't really remember the sillyness that far back in the Obama years. Joe Rogan at least has credentialed guests and lets them talk off-narritive. In that CNN horse-paste interview he had a CNN guy on who could have challenged him back or defended the position.
Rogan has much, much higher standards than what has traditionally been done for politics. He's probably doing better than traditional news reporting in other areas too.
Agreed. I see this as a result of Spotify avoiding risks:
1. to not lose as many customers as possible who are outraged with Rogan — maybe they did the math based on advertising profiling.
2. to not lose Joe Rogan, one of the most popular shows they have, and thus, customers/users.
3. to not spark further outrage from other popular artists who might leave.
4. to protect their name and brand.
5. to avoid being removed from the Apple App Store when Apple eventually lays the ban hammer down because "their app is spreading misinfo", just like the Alex Jones debacle that empowered Apple to assess app availability based on their political whims and agreement (abhorrent by the way). This goes for other platforms.
6. to avoid banks who manage their funds from canceling them for supporting a show, person, or stance the bank disagrees with.
We are truly in an ugly mess of global political wars where even the slightest wrong move in speech/expression will completely ruin a company or person's ability to survive—well, maybe survival isn't the issue, but undue harm is.
This is especially on the Left, who are too ready and willing to spark that ruin, viewing legal systems and power only as a tool to control their opposition, who has valid stances on myriad topics. On the Right, they complain a lot, but at least they aren't using any means necessary to actively change the fundamental course of people's lives, livelihood, and futures due to what boils down to a political disagreement in the realm of speech/expression.
We can't pretend that science is inherently fact just because it leads to forming facts later, when it has always been described as a a fallible process of discovery, leading to theories, which are either supported by evidence or amply refuted.
In this case, the doctors Rogan hosted, along with 100k+ other doctors globally have refuted the mainstream claims around vaccines and the handling of treatment — enough to require panels of discussion and enormous scrutiny towards the likes of Fauci and others who are claiming to "be science," in nothing other than pure dripping hubris and condescension towards anyone who dares to question them.
This is one problem we should be addressing, in addition to the censor-or-fail mentality affecting nearly every publishing platform.
> This is especially on the Left, who are too ready and willing to spark that ruin, viewing legal systems and power only as a tool to control their opposition, who has valid stances on myriad topics. On the Right, they complain a lot, but at least they aren't using any means necessary to actively change the fundamental course of people's lives
If you look politically, it is just as true, and historically much more so I feel from the American right, which has normally had the church and the puritans on its side, and has always fought to get sex, LGBTQ, minorities, and even science removed from popular channels of discourse.
Also, as someone who follows the science, I'm not seeing 100k+ researchers with published data refuting the science. Doctors are not all scientist. Most practitioners have their own belief system, often from their own daily biases. And in the medical science community, it turns out, those things are being investigated, but are still far from being unambiguous and evidence backed. The policy makers are taking risks one way or another, because they're having to make decisions with limited scientific analysis, data, and experiments.
When you think of scientific consensus, what do you think it means? It is a confidence score in the current state of data and experiment. It is an assessment of given what we know today, what is most likely true. You can take bets against it, because it is probabilities and not certainties, science is always probabilistic unlike religion. But if you're a policy maker, taking a bet against the current odds seem like a gamble you shouldn't be making.
Thus from my stance, this is all political, and science is doing the right thing, and most policy makers that follows scientific consensus are just playing it safe with the odds.
The people who are trying to discredit science and the consensus are taking political bets, they want to discredit things to gain power, in the off chance the consensus is wrong, they win big politically, in the many more likely odds they'd be wrong, most people won't notice and it won't make the news.
The effect of it all though, from my point of view, is actually that it is used once again by the right as a way to convince people science is wrong all along. Which goes back to my initial take, historically, the right has always tried to silence science, and this to me is just another attempt at discrediting its processes and misrepresenting it's propositions and stance. It's trying to get people to instead believe that the political leaders and key scientists that have become agent of politics are more trustworthy than science itself, and that they now should listen to them exclusively for the real truth.
That... doesn't make sense. They can choose to publish or not publish whatever they want in their paper. The top people at a newspaper are literally called editors, and they routinely make decisions about what goes in and what does not.
Happens all the time. Like, IIRC The Spectator (a hard-right wing publication) taking down a fawning article about Greece’s far-right Golden Dawn by Taki. Maybe I misremembered the specific piece, but I can’t find hide nor hair of it on the Spectator website, despite plenty of (broken) links to it from commentators.
It's not censorship, it's just a publication strategy. It's editorialising content they bought and paid for, whether they publish their own property or not is up to them.
The government didn't ask Spotify to censor Joe Rogan. The surgeon general didn't ask Spotify to censor Joe Rogan. Not even the extremely uncharitable, biased take in that trash you linked to goes so far as to claim that.
If the government had made a law making it illegal for Spotify to carry Joe Rogan, that would have been censorship. None of the conditions were even close.
Spotify is a private institution, and has the option of carrying content, or not, at their editorial discretion. You can disagree with their choice, and if you do, the proper redress is to put pressure on Spotify, not to claim it's government censorship, which it's not.
It has that effect though. It comes from an official position that represents the views of an elected leader, and by extension, has the weight of it being a mandate or statement with enough public attention to see or expect change.
While it may not be in legal terms, many see it as an opportunity to greenlight the bypassing of legal/legislative procedures, especially by those who consider the current administration(s) political allies.
As an example, Jen Psaki has stated in the past that they are working with social media to "handle disinformation", and the likes of wokie Zuckerberg wouldn't hesitate to operate outside of Congress or courts to satisfy the whims of his masters.
What utter piffle. Elected politicians and appointees complain about things in the press every single day, and have done for the entire history of democracy. That is not censorship, or attempted censorship, or anything remotely adjacent to it.
What if the political appointee publicly states they would like Spotify to censor Joe Rogan? Perhaps 'the government' is simply too ineffably abstract an entity to attach to any individual actor commonly regarded as comprising it.
The government didn't ask Spotify, the surgeon General suggested Spotify should do take it down on MSNBC. Totally different, and if they want to take the governments suggestion that isn't government enforced censorship even if it leaves a bad taste in your mouth
The Surgeon General isn't a position elected by the People, and to have them making strong suggestions (or threats) around speech that is regarded as highly controversial (i.e. both opposing sides are large and have valid stances) is repulsive, when behind the scenes _and_ publicly there is legal and monetary coercion happening to put the likes of Spotify in jeopardy if they don't bend to a single political narrative.
So if the government can force spotify to publish all opinions, why should they not be able to force you to do the same on your blog?
In the status quo private people and companies are allowed to not accept contributions on their websites. This is not censorship, this is their right as runners of a plattform. Joe rogan can always go and create his own if he finds that no one wants to publish him.
I don't see how enabling the government to force people to publish speech they don't want to say isn't 100% worse than what we have now. It reminds me of stories from the soviet union.
If the government has tried to "force" Spotify to take down or produce content, then the government is in the wrong and Spotify is spineless for not fighting back. We have the Constitution for a reason in the U.S. The government would not have a leg to stand on.
But that's not what happened. Spotify is taking down content for financial reasons. They don't like the heat they are getting from the press, musicians, and yes maybe perhaps the government. And companies have always made editorial decisions for financial reasons.
Indeed. And this happened after a very specific carve-out to understood freedom of association law via the Civil Rights Act. And with good reason! But it was controversial then and in some circles it still is. The CRA curtailed the freedoms of many to give greater freedom to all in the form of equal treatment regardless of [insert full list of inherent traits here], not just under the law, but in business also. Prior to it, all the discriminations you listed were legal.
If you think we should further carve into people's freedoms to associate (or, in this case, freedom of the press to publish or refrain from publishing Rogan) in the interests of broader freedom, what should that law look like and on what underlying philosophy should it be based?
You're allowed to say anything you want, but you are not allowed to discriminate based on race, and if such signs in the window would cause a reasonable person to think you are discriminating based on race, then yes they must be taken down.
There are obviously limits to free speech and there always have been. Can I perjure myself in front of a jury? Can I yell "fire" in a crowded theater? Each of these actions would have a consequence, and it is the act of knowingly provoking that consequence that is prohibited, not the act of speech itself.
If there's a fire, or you think there's a fire, I'd say you have a moral obligation to yell "fire in a crowded theater".
It's probably the worst example as this was the metaphor was by the government when people were passing out anti war flyers opposing the draft during WWI. These same people were tried and convicted under the espionage and sedition acts. The judges unanimously sided with the government.
If I think there's a fire, or a problem, damn straight I'm going to speak up, and this definitely feels like Spotify is taking down things "the public", no court even required how great, find distasteful in the moment.
> The counter argument is that censorship is bad in all its forms.
That’s a platitude, not an argument. And being absolutist is being sadly ignorant of the realities of public speech.
Censorship is not just sometimes good, it’s also sometimes required by law. There is a fairly long list of things that are explicitly illegal to say and are exceptions to US freedom of speech laws, including: libel, slander, obscenity, pornography, sedition, incitement, fighting words, classified information, copyright violation, trade secrets, state secrets, non-disclosure agreements, personal private information, and, last but not least: lies.
Censorship is required by the GDPR, for example, when dealing with Personally Identifying Information (PII). Because the freedoms to speak publicly can conflict with our own freedoms privately, some kinds of censorship are beneficial to people including you.
Commercial speech is specifically exempted from US Freedom of Speech laws. You can spend time getting upset over legal private censorship all you want, but it isn’t a Freedom of Speech issue, and it doesn’t amount to a meaningful moral or principled stand. Our courts have already established through two hundred years or argument and precedent that our principles are that cash corrupts speech and should not be a protected category.
Before the internet, if I wrote a letter to the editor of a magazine or comic book, the editor obviously made the decision whether to publish my letter or not. Was this censorship? No, of course not. And no one complained about it. It wasn't my magazine after all.
Of course, I could just start my own magazine if I want to publish my own content, but that would obviously be ridiculously cost prohibitive. And this was the norm for magazines, radio, TV. There was always strong editorial control by corporations.
Boom comes the internet, and all of that goes away. As long as you can convince your web host to host you, you can say what you like.
But now podcasts and content creators are making deals with big corporations again, and those corporations have the right to make the same decisions the magazine editors did. It's not censorship. It's how things have always been.
You can always build your own website, and the government will not interfere. There is your freedom of speech. Your web host might, but even that hasn't been an obstacle for extreme left/right wing sites, at least not so far. Worse comes to worse you can seed your content on bittorrent.
> Worse comes to worse you can seed your content on bittorrent.
At the expense of huge barriers of entry for people to discover that content, or even care bothering with the hoops you would have to jump through to find something you're interested in, to the less tech savvy.
This is partly why the removal of content after its publication due to political pressure and threats of coercion is fundamentally the problem that needs to be addressed.
Whether it's semantically "censorship" or not is debatable, but the ill effects it has on society are irrefutable, by communicating:
1. these views need to be taken down.
2. these views need to be silenced.
3. the consumers of this information are "domestic terrorists" or "completely stupid", as readily communicated by major pundits on the Left, and at times, by our own leaders (Biden, Trudeau).
4. the 100,000+ global outspoken doctors who agree with these controversial views are fringe, misguided, deserving of losing their licenses, etc.
... All 4 reek of condescension and political bias in a way that damages and divides society to the extent that massive psychological harm is inflicted on millions of people seeking good information who want to be left alone, and risks enforcing a single stream of thought where panels of experts or public dialogue are discouraged.
That should alarm anyone who trusts the scientific method as a means to find answers and provide honest insight into something as imperative as a pandemic.
I am not American, I grew up in a country where everything Nazi is very much verboten (Austria, Germany). I was always quite curious about the American insistence on free speech.
Today I feel free speech is worse off in the US than it is over here, purely for cultural reasons.
Also: I thought the limits on the US idea of free speech was that things like yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theatre would not be covered by free speech. But hasn't the internet created another kind of crowded theatre in which people can yell the online equivalent of "Fire!" to deal substantial damage to society?
I think censorship is a slippery slope and I am not at all for it — yet I wonder if what we see here is just the beginning of society figuring out how to deal with free speech in the web. Finding the borders of what can reasonably be allowed, because "everything" proofed to be an unacceptably destructive answer to most.
It's because the loudest advocates of free speech, for the most part, have always gotten away with being aggressive.
Scientific discussion, as faulty as it is, happened just fine behind the scenes. But people who have limited views of how things work think the smart-pants showing up on JRE is the real deal when most serious people know it's mostly hot air. (And of course compounded by multiple frustrations - which is totally understandable)
Not by accident: history will show that WWIII was fought largely on the internet, yet caused a death toll in excess of land wars thanks to the ability to weaponize health crises.
It's not strictly 'people' yelling fire to cause damage to society. It is nationstates, same as always, contriving TO damage competing nationstates in ingenious ways. Points for the ingenuity but these are still warlike acts. None of this happens in a vacuum, and so much of it would dry up and become irrelevant if not fed and directed from elsewhere.
> I guess the only long-term solution is having a large majority of the population with enough "mental defenses", being able to think for themselves.
Fully agree.
I think we miss over and over this element in the “free speech debate”. We tend to consider “free speech” merely as “allowing an individual to express him/herself” and I think is more complex than that. From my perspective, “freedom of speech” should be a stack formed always by three elements:
1. Freedom of speech itself
2. Intellectual humbleness from the speaker.
3. Critical thinking from the listeners.
Without those elements, I think we will not progress on the big scale on this matter and will fall over and over again in the same “back and forth” empty fight of “should/shouldn’t we allow this guy to podcast those things?”.
I don't feel there are many "unsayable" things in Austria and Germany. We still have a vibrant right wing here and the left wing is arguably more left than most things found in the US. They just are not allowed to display Nazi insignia.
In fact when it comes to sexuality and nudity europe feels a ton more free than the US when it comes to speech. We don't think a depiction of a female nipple that kids used to suck as kids will corrupt society for some weird religous reason for example. The US is incredibly prude and in that area censorship is rampant, yet nearly nobody complains here.
There is always soft censorship going on in any society — it is just not visible to those inside it if the big majority agrees. You don't need a central, authoritarian censorship for this you need people that have a common shared minimum standard of what they think is acceptable. Or aa you called it: enough "mental defenses"
I totally agree with you around regarding the way sexuality is treated here in the US, and think you're on the whole correct that socially we soft censor a whole lot.
But when you say "vibrant right wing" and they're "just...not allowed to display Nazi insignia", are you referring to the extreme right wing that're basically Nazis without the logos?
If so, given that they exist, what do you see as the point at all of having those bans on the iconography? It seems your society largely _does_ have the mental defenses that I agree with OP are necessary to combat the downsides of free speech writ large. So then why have those bans in place at all?
It is against the law to run around with a swastika and raise your hand and do the Hitler-Gruß, it is illegal to display a SS-flag. It is illegal even to own such insignia. Denying the holocaust can also be illegal etc.
Yet many of the German Nazis still have those at home, they can be shown in educational contexts or in museums etc. Forbidding something doesn't make it go away, it just shows where the free democratic society you live in draws the border.
Germany has been a democracy before the Nazis took over in the 20s and it is one again today. However many Germans are well aware that this could change again in the future. You might have heard about the paradoxon of intolerance: if you are tolerant to fascists, because tolerance is your highest value, one day they might come to power and create an intolerant society — therefor if maintaining a tolerant society is our goal we paradoxically have to show intolerance to those who want to abolish it.
This means Germans weigh the value of our democracy surviving fascist uprising higher than even freedom of speech.
This is true to any society, country or culture. I get why there's a stigma connected to Germany, but what happened there could easily have happened- or happen in the future - literally anywhere else. I don't see any society immune to this, and knowing this vulnerability is precisely the first foundation of defense against these extremes. I agree we can't be gullible about freedom by allowing it to become a tool serving evil.
at a population level, this total doesn't work. every IQ strata has their Joe Rogan - someone who speaks to their fear, hatred, and bias in a way that makes sense to them.
smart people are equally susceptible to propaganda and mind control as dumb people. But smart people think they are immune through "critical thinking".
FB has teams of social scientists with all the data in the world to run experiments on us. We are herd animals who think we are all rugged individualists.
Where "nazi-like" ideas are mostly everything that disagrees with a given narrative (particularly the mainstream narrative). Of course this comprises actual Nazis successors, but for the most part you just have the hammer to nail everything down that one does not agree with. It is in fact so widely used that it has its own fallacy: Reductio ad Hitlerum.
I like the safety/damage perspective you brought up. Feels like some powers have figured out how to sell seemingly any limit on liberty as an increase in safety. Seen in that way many other trends in US make sense - TSA since 9/11, complete absence of kids from all public spaces, mass surveillance, maybe even COVID restrictions. Too many important things are dangerous to make bubble wrapping the entire world a reasonable strategy.
> Also: I thought the limits on the US idea of free speech was that things like yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theatre would not be covered by free speech. But hasn't the internet created another kind of crowded theatre in which people can yell the online equivalent of "Fire!" to deal substantial damage to society?
This is a very good point. Many extremists (left and right) are shouting "fascism!" or "communism!" and moving masses of people. The analogy works quite well.
It's not a very well thought of equivalence when the individual can't even yell "I think there might be a fire" without being censored, because platforms think (and most of the time they're right) that consumers are too stupid.
> Too bad only one side of the analogy gets banned.
Right wingers encourage and carry out violence against people, based on traits like race, otherness, etc. Left wingers mostly focus on property, fascists ("Antifa") and sometimes the police. Both kinds of violence are wrong to various degrees, but I can kinda understand that someone who formulates a threat of vandalism against corporate symbols will get banned less likely than someone who formulates violent threats against minorities or specific persons.
These two things are not the same, it is the difference between someone keying your mercedes and someone assaulting you in the street. One thing is shitty, but survivable, the other isn't.
This characterisation is not based on my feelings or the claims of either side, but backed by publications like the annual report on the protection of the constitution as it is made by the German Verfassungsschutz – an organization which can hardly be described as left leaning: https://www.verfassungsschutz.de/SharedDocs/publikationen/DE...
I only found the summary in english, the full (German) version has more fine grained statistics which support my characterisation.
It really didn't prove to be unacceptably destructive. That's an attempt to create a new narrative that sounds moderate and middle ground, but it's not based on anything. Free speech worked out just great and the internet went from nothing to a critical piece of everyone's lives in the span of about 20 years, on the back of more or less pure free speech policies. It's not an accident that the USA dominates internet services and Germany/Austria are left with 20th century industries like cars. That's the first amendment doing its job.
No. He could have continued distribution the same way he was prior. He also could have self distributed. He didn’t need a distribution platform because Podcasts don’t require it. Just an RSS feed.
Why isn't anyone who think they have something to say that might be bad for business or controversial not just self-publish? It's normal that distributors and publications would be unsure about publishing controversial stuff that could be bad PR and bad for business, so self-publishing seems like the way to go.
Irrelevant in terms of what values should be exemplified.
Not to mention you don't know the contract. The only public knowledge about the contract comes from Rogans description orbit, which contradicts what you're saying.
All of this surprises me at some level, this cultural tendency toward censorship. It's not even really about whether it's in Spotify, Twitter, YouTube's rights to do it as private companies, it's why do some feel this need to do it at all?
Is Joe Rogan really the problem? If you don't like it, don't listen to it. I don't.
Someone else framed this in terms of centralized vs decentralized distribution, which brings up a lot of important considerations — if Neil Young or Joni Mitchell would just distribute their songs themselves, they wouldn't have to issue an ultimatum. Likewise, if Rogan did so he wouldn't be the target of censorship.
But why isn't Young making that his hill? He doesn't care about freedom of speech, he just wants his ascendant. And Spotify could do what used to seem to me to be common sense, support its artists and drop those calling for restrictions on other artists' works.
This is a bad cultural route we're headed down. It doesn't go anywhere well. "Cancel culture" became a sort of buzzy topic of conversation, but it's a real problem and goes deeper than the referent of that catchphrase.
Yeah I've encountered people that tell me "it's their choice if they leave spotify if rogan wasn't censored" like that wasn't a prime example of cancel culture. The worse thing is that they think they are in the right. Eventually you if you can convince them that its censorship, they will counter that there was nothing wrong with censoring people "[... because of x]". No reason or whatsoever legitimates censorship in my opinion.
I also get cancelled on several forums on a regular basis when I say bad things about pharmaceutical companies or against government etc. even if it's completely neutral. I've seen all reasons already to censor me:
- insults
- conspiracy
- talking about controversial topics in general
It’s not censorship, nobody is saying he can’t go and do his podcast on his own site. Those artists just don’t want to be associated with him. They don’t want to be earning Spotify money that goes to Rogan. I respect their actions completely.
Also “cancel culture” is mostly not a bad thing, it’s more like “consequence culture”. The people who find themselves “cancelled” almost always still end up with large platforms.
I'm surprised to see these talking points still being repeated. They were plausible a few years ago, but now? Just silly.
> The people who find themselves “cancelled” almost always still end up with large platforms.
Survivorship bias. Most of the people who get cancelled just disappear. They don't have FU money or a big following. We only keep hearing about the few who are too big to cancel.
Plus you're not taking into account how much of a chilling effect all of this has. Many people are now self censoring. That has a regressive effect on society. We can't progress without free and open exchange of ideas.
The ones who “just disappear” aren’t actually losing much. If they don’t have a platform in the first place then how much does getting cancelled actually matter? That’s why I’m talking about the popular ones.
I don’t buy the idea that the supposed “chilling effect” is a bad thing. If “self censoring” means there are fewer people spreadinf misinformation, then I’m all for it.
That's incorrect. No matter where Rogan hosts his content, these people will go after him. They've pressured AWS, CloudFlare and others before too, with some success.
I do think that there is a certain mob aspect to it which is... uncomfortable. And when the affected people don't really have agency unlike in this case (i.e. some 20-something posts something dumb on social media that embarrasses their employer and they get fired because that's the easiest thing for their company to do), that's even more uncomfortable.
But ultimately individuals can't and shouldn't be prevented from doing anything they want within the bounds of law.
This is not "political censorship" this is "corporate censorship", at least be precise about what you are saying. It's absolutely within their right to self censor their product.
This is not an attack on free speech, this is free market economics at work. Spotify is free to promote and profit from whomever they please, and other creative artists are free to take their work elsewhere. Market demand will determine the outcome.
The First Amendment states "Congress shall make no law ..."; it says only what the *gov't* can and cannot do
Privatized censorship is censorship. We were discussing censorship. We are not discussing your particular government. This may surprise many Americans but people are not always talking about the US government.
But if you use the word too liberally, it loses its meaning. Corporations have always editorialized their content. Now that's censorship?
Or to put it more simply: would you consider parents who tell their children not to curse or risk punishment censorship? Or how about at school? How about requiring a dress code at a restaurant or school? Is this all censorship?
We have to be clear. Corporations editorializing has always been called editorializing, even when they do so at the government's behest, which has happened historically when the government feels publishing something could threaten national security or might create a panic. Or when a journalist is trying to curry favor with a politician. It's only censorship when a government authority figure threatens punishment.
This chain is about "free speech", not censorship, and "free speech" alludes to the first amendment of the US constitution. You're replying to somebody talking about free speech, who was replying to somebody likewise talking about free speech.
You seem like you just wanted to condescend some Americans - a very tired trope on this site.
The third way is believing there is practical value to restricting governments from disallowing their citizens to speak freely because a people who cannot speak freely tends to become revolutionary over time as their true desires grow divorced from the government's understanding of them.
That's miles away from thinking paying people to proliferate lies about how vaccines work is cool.
This argument hinges on whether one believes internet access is a right, and if it is, what form that right takes.
Neither is a settled question, though the world community tends to be leaning towards "yes" as the answer to the first and is busying itself with the mucky process of answering the second.
handeave-handwave That document is a good start, but it mostly says human rights that are violated are still violated if they are violated with the Internet. There are a lot of subtle questions of rights collision it doesn't address, to which I was referring (including how freedom of speech and freedom of press interact when the speech is through someone else's service).
... And that's considering only the UN member nations. 70+ nations are not UN members and a statement like this has no bearing on them.
This is a straw man. Something closer would be. You have a blog. You like the content I create. So you form a contract with me to development content and put it on your blog. Part of the contract is that you are the exclusive distributor of my content. You then decide you don’t like the content I’m putting out and cease to distribute my content.
Misinformation is a meaningless word. Authorities are wrong all of the time. Misinformation requires belief in a heterodoxy. Heterodoxy is ascientific.
I am not as free as Joe Rogan to get paid $100 million by Spotify for doing a podcast. So we don't all seem to have the same amount of "freedom" here.
Spotify's arbitrary choices about what content they want to host comes into it, what content they think is good for their business, etc. I don't think Spotify's choice to pay Rogan $100 million but not me is any more or less "censorship" than their choice of what episodes they want to include for that $100 million.
You are saying it's clear freedom is not impacted by Spotify choosing who to pay $100 million to, but is equally clear that it's impacted by Spotify choosing what episodes to pay $100 million for?
Does freedom require my boss to let me do whatever I want at work too? Or just Rogan?
None of that seems as clear to me as it does to you.
Yes and no. You’re right that to many want to censor everyone they disagree with.
In this case, sure Rogan is just an idiot, but he’s honestly allowed to be. Spotifys competition, with Google and other only caused problems because Spotify was dumb enough to pay Joe Rogan $100 million for an exclusive podcast. By doing so they went from just being a platform to having an editiorial responsibility.
Had Spotify not paid Joe Rogan, they could have defended their position as “just a platform provider” who shouldn’t interfer with content.
I would sooo love to have my free speech violated the way Joe does: having episodes of talk show I was hired to do for 100 million dollars removed.
In fact, I can deal with bunch more free speech violations if I getting enough money that I and my children and my grandchildren will never know need and never have to work days in their lives.
No, people making millions out of misinformation is the problem. They have learned to appeal to primitive instincts and are making their fortunes out of that.
Attempts are curtailing the spread of dangerous misinformation wouldn't happen without the dangerous misinformation first.
Rather than being mad for "people calling for censorship", maybe you should be mad for people making a profit of deaths, or the general anti-science, anti-education culture that consumes and amplifies it.
Generally, there might be cases where I agree with you. But this is very different. Spotify paid Joe Rogan 100 million for the podcast. They (probably) own all the rights to this podcast. If they don't like it anymore they can do whatever they want with it. If I buy a TV and don't like it anymore I can also set it on fire. If you don't want this to happen to your TV, don't sell it to me.
More relevantly, if you've got a motivation to pay handsomely for the falsehoods to be propagated because they serve your purposes, you end up with truth having to compete with heavily subsidized falsehoods. That's a big ask.
It's not only about whether the falsehoods (say, National Enquirer type stuff, nonsense that hooks gullible people) are sexy in that they latch onto people's assumptions and fears. It's also about who's paying to keep pumping them out. None of this is organic. A lot of money goes into subsidizing this stuff. Follow the money and you end up with rival countries who actively want to see their enemies harmed, and have arrived at this very effective way of sowing chaos and sabotage.
People don't have to be that dumb, if you can flood their zone with crafted information to sway 'em. You just have to hook them and then lead them. You don't have to rely on people being incredibly, organically obtuse if you can play 'em and manipulate them, and that's where social media turned into a superweapon. It was for sale, and not very concerned about who was buying it, or why they were doing it. And here we are.
That doesn’t really work if your holy speech is merely mediocre.
There is a reason people try to lump in any criticism with absolute insanity like the pizzagate conspiracies. They need the contrast to be as big as they can make it, so their story appears better than it is. Because on its own it really isn’t quite good enough.
You are quite literally proving to those people that there is a conspiracy to suppress the information. I don't think banning pizzagate from public discourse does anything beneficial. I say this as someone with a nutcase qanon family member.
The First Amendment protects us from the government censoring speech. It is not a prohibition on private companies removing content or private citizens demanding the removal of speech they disapprove of.
The fact that this discourse can happen in the open is proof that free speech exists and is in force.
If the Biden administration could control speech they could ban anyone suggesting anything other than the official position of the government. Clearly this is not happening.
Likewise, if the government could control speech they could choose to force Neil Young to place his music back on Spotify for the sake of trade. This is not happening.
Once again we have someone here conflating the first amendement with free speech. Free speech is a principle, the first amendment works in service of it.
The GP’s comment is that “This is the latest attack in an ongoing war on free speech. We are losing our freedoms.”
What freedoms can possible be referred to other than the First Amendment? This is the standard language of someone applying the First Amendment to private citizens and companies.
This specific conflict is involving Americans and the American arm of Spotify. Those unenumerated freedoms are supported by the laws of the country.
If you want to devolve into purely hypotheticals you’re going to find yourself on weak legs because the ultimate argument ends up being that “Joe Rogan speech is denying my freedom from hearing arguments I do not agree with.” These specific issues have been long settled by the rule of law. Being contrarian about this is neither productive or practical.
Where does my freedom end and yours begin? If I am infringing on what you feel is your freedom, where is that line? Do I get to play my loud music at 2AM when you have an early morning? Is it ok if you are sleeping in the next day so it doesn’t really matter that I’m keeping you up? When do these ultimate and unlimited unenumerated freedoms fall apart?
When they infringe on what society considers to be the normative freedoms we all get to enjoy.
Spotify gets to run their private business as they see fit because that is their freedom to do as long as they do not break a law or infringe upon your freedoms. Your perceived freedoms cannot infringe upon their freedoms.
I made no claim that Spotify is without right to do as it pleases per contractual obligation. I do make the claim that freedoms can be eroded legally, such as freedom to enjoy an alternative opinion.
As I mentioned in the other comment, I was replying to someone explicitly stating that “we are losing out freedoms.” That is not a censorship argument. Censorship can happen without your individual liberties being attacked.
This is something I think you need to unpack, at least if you want to convince me.
Prior to the last few years, Propaganda has always been acknowledged as detrimental to society, and a weapon yielded by authoritarian anti-democratic regimes and forces such as Nazism, Fascism, Communism and others.
It's nature is to deceive, misled, and discredit the truth, in order to gain political power.
It's seen as many as a way to repress speech, by shouting louder and more clearly then the voices of truth. It silences other messages by publishing large content to the contrary as well as direct attacks on the truth to discredit it.
From that angle, it seems to me Propaganda itself is a weapon against free speech.
In my opinion that means when you have a lot of propaganda in your media and social spheres, you automatically have less free speech.
Now I reckon that just having someone censor what they think is propaganda is giving that person, if they were the one behind the propaganda in the first place, all the cards, as they can now promote Propaganda and silence voices against it.
And that's not what I'm saying the solution should be, but for me to be satisfied, I need a solution that recognizes both these dimensions. And the solution of just allow all form of propaganda I also see as terrible, it's the second worst one after the other, just let people spread confusion and attacks to the truth in masse is almost as bad as letting them silence the truth.
I agree, but I just can't think what that would be. If you restrict propaganda; then you need to define propaganda. By doing that; you are perpetuating your or someone else's bias which would then be amplified by restricting everyone else from hearing of alternative ideas.
To be fair, you covered that; but I don't see how restricting speech does anything else.
I'd say that we have much bigger issues to worry about than censoring Joe Rogan if you truly believe the world is so far gone that majority of the population is not capable of listening to multiple opposing viewpoints, weighing them accordingly, and coming to their own conclusions.
> but free speech idealism is dangerous and is actively harming the world - [...] antivaxx crap resulting in resurgence of once eradicated diseases
Similarly, free speech denialism is resulting in resurgence of censorship and propaganda.
We're actively handing the only real power we have in a democratic society back into the hands of the establishment, and for what?
If you have any moral principles, it seems naive to think that your opinions will always align with the popular narrative.
By delegitimizing the fundamental right to free speech, you are ensuring that you will be silenced, cancelled, or deplatformed yourself if you ever attempt to speak out about something you don't agree with.
> Similarly, free speech denialism is resulting in resurgence of censorship and propaganda
What is free speech denialism? Nobody denies free speech is a very important right to be cherished and preserved. Propaganda hae nothing to do with free speech, and hasn't really moved either way (there's as much as there was before).
It's not about the popular narrative, it's about boundaries. Overt racism, antivax anti-science shouldn't be excused with free speech, which doesn't in any way impact wether or not and who can criticise what.
Belief that opposing viewpoints don't deserve to be protected under free speech (excluding the obvious, like inciting violence).
> Propaganda hae nothing to do with free speech, and hasn't really moved either way (there's as much as there was before).
I don't have any numbers to back it up, but even if it's not more common, it's certainly more impactful with all of the "wrongthink" being silenced.
> Overt racism, antivax anti-science shouldn't be excused with free speech
Your second claim is more interesting, because I keep seeing people repeat the claims that Joe Rogan is "antivax & anti-science". Keep in mind, I don't follow his podcast, but I watched the full episode with Robert Malone after the social media outcry started.
The conclusion that I came to is that he's not "anti-science" - that would imply that he doesn't believe in the scientific method. What people really mean when they say that he's anti-science is that he came to different conclusions than they did after considering the evidence (or lack thereof), therefore he's wrong, and since his critics view themselves as "pro-science", Joe must be anti-science.
But whether or not he's wrong, it doesn't have anything to do with freedom of speech. If you do believe that he's wrong, call him out publicly, write a blog post detailing why he's wrong, record your own podcast and debunk any claims he or his guests made, with evidence. Be the opposing voice and present rational counter-arguments.
Bad research gets published all the time and "science" is not some singular entity that only consists of homogeneous ideas, and that's not even taking into account all of the conflicts of interest that exist for the pharma industry in publishing research that stands to make them $billions.
This is why it's important to allow an open and free discussion of opposing viewpoints, it's the only way of advancing human knowledge and widespread acceptance of your ideas in an open and free society. Censoring someone because you disagree with them is not going to change their (or their viewers') mind.
> which doesn't in any way impact wether or not and who can criticise what
If I risk getting censored, "cancelled", having my livelihood taken away for voicing my opposing views (which aren't violent nor bigoted, just a simple disagreement on the topic of scientific research), I would argue that very much impacts who can criticize what.
> Overt racism, antivax anti-science shouldn't be excused with free speech, which doesn't in any way impact wether or not and who can criticise what.
All those things are covered under "free speech". There's no legal definition for "hate speech", or "anti-vax speech" or "anti-science speech". They are all ALLOWED.
> All those things are covered under "free speech". There's no legal definition for "hate speech", or "anti-vax speech" or "anti-science speech". They are all ALLOWED.
In the USA, and not everybody lives there. Heck, Spotify, the company in question, is Swedish.
Hate speech has plenty of definitions in plenty of different countries, with varying levels ( e.g. in France blatant overt racism is illegal, in Thailand it's "stoking negative feelings in people" or some other bullshit ).
> Hate speech has plenty of definitions in plenty of different countries, with varying levels ( e.g. in France blatant overt racism is illegal, in Thailand it's "stoking negative feelings in people" or some other bullshit ).
I'll take the US model since it's clearly superior.
Dismissing someone's bullshit (even if the dismissal is exaggerated, which i don't think it is) isn't really comparable to that someone convincing people that magic snake oil will cure them of a disease.
“I'm not saying everyone dissenting from the generally accepted opinions should be fully banned from the Internet or sent to jail”
What are you saying, exactly? We just fine them increasing amounts of money until they agree with the “generally accepted opinions?”
Who gets to decide what the generally accepted opinions are? How do we even know they’re right? Why does everybody have to agree on everything? Your musings are, quite frankly, childish. People are entitled to their incorrect opinions.
If you want to end climate change denialism or anti-vaccine sentiment, discuss the facts with people who sympathize with those viewpoints. Convince them on the evidence. Find better evidence if you can’t.
The people like yourself who want to engage in censorship never have the truth on their side. There’d be no reason to censor anything if you did: just lead with the truth instead. Let the facts speak for themselves. The fact that you can’t convince people of your “facts” is proof that you your ideas are garbage.
By all means though, continue to push for censorship. It will only increase the skepticism and distrust of the “generally accepted opinions” held by polite society.
> What are you saying, exactly? We just fine them increasing amounts of money until they agree with the “generally accepted opinions
Maybe? Alex Jones still hasn't accepted reality regarding the Sandy Hook massacre, even after losing a trial. Éric Zemmour still peddles blatantly racist and false information after being fined multiple times for it. Is there a way to even stop that kind of person? Anyone listening to them ( and Trump, and Nigel Farage, and Boris Johnson) obviously isn't interested in facts, because everything out of their mouths is easily debunkable with a few minutes online
> If you want to end climate change denialism or anti-vaccine sentiment, discuss the facts with people who sympathize with those viewpoints. Convince them on the evidence. Find better evidence if you can’t.
That doesn't work and hasn't for years. You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.
> The people like yourself who want to engage in censorship never have the truth on their side. There’d be no reason to censor anything if you did: just lead with the truth instead. Let the facts speak for themselves. The fact that you can’t convince people of your “facts” is proof that you your ideas are garbage.
That's an entirely useless personal attack. I never claimed any facts, I'm claiming that people peddling easily debunked bullshit they pass as fact can't be allowed to do this constantly without repercussions. Because they are causing real life harm and using "it's just my opinion, I'm just asking questions" as a shitty excuse.
All governments spread misinformation on purpose? I suppose it's too much to ask for proof on that?
Maybe you mean the initial mask conundrum? That was evolving guidance based on realities ( not enough masks) and current understanding of a changing situation. It was pretty much everyone, led by the WHO, though, but it was only kind of wrong ( I don't know about the whole world, but in France the official line was that "masks don't help you not get infected by much, there aren't enough of them and most people wouldn't know how to use them properly, so there's no need for everyone to wear a mask", which evolved to "masks stop you spreading, so everyone wear a mask").
So, all governments officially said all of those while knowing them to be untrue? That's a bold claim ( i live in France and don't recall anything of the like on any of them). Care to share some sources?
I can also add the lie about 90% of patients in ICU being non-vaxed. We were later told that it was a misinterpretation of the available data.
Etc etc. It became kind of a meme: when Olivier Veran says something will never be done, it ends up done quite soon. I was about to get this vaccine. But those blatant lies deterred me from doing so.
It's not lying to change one's opinion, or to be mistaken. Lying needs intent. Véran changing his opinion or being overruled by Macron doesn't mean any one of them is lying on purpose for some nebulous purpose.
> Maybe? Alex Jones still hasn't accepted reality regarding the Sandy Hook massacre, even after losing a trial. Éric Zemmour still peddles blatantly racist and false information after being fined multiple times for it. Is there a way to even stop that kind of person? Anyone listening to them ( and Trump, and Nigel Farage, and Boris Johnson) obviously isn't interested in facts, because everything out of their mouths is easily debunkable with a few minutes online
Do you have any examples of left-wingers producing misinformation? You know, people on CNN or MSNBC? Or are you going to produce only right-wing examples because you live in an absolute bubble and have no ability to see that there is daily misinformation on all corporate-owned networks: Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, etc... and even in a very egregious way.
It is clear to me that you only read Democratic-party aligned news sources and have a terribly biased and skewed worldview where apparently only "tHe RiGhT-WiNgErS aRe RaCiSt hurr durr". Your guy Joe Biden has produced more racist outcomes with his Crime Bill than Donald Trump has ever done in his tweets.
Nice attempt at whataboutism, but I'm talking about specific examples of egregious misinformation that is kind of dangerous. If you have anything of substance to add besides handwaving "the other side in my broken two party country is also bad and lies about inconsequential stuff while the one i like literally spreads medical misinformation resulting in people dying", do so. For the record, both your parties are rightwing, one is just far-right while the other is centre-right. Both are full of idiots, but one is obviously worse, which is sad for the people opposed to the policies of the less bad one ( because they have no other options).
You have also spewed well known lie by claiming that Ivermectin is a horse medicine, while it is first and foremost human medicine which was only later on appropriated for veterinary purposes. There are studies on Ivermectin's effectiveness for COVID, some of which are ongoing, and calling it a "horse dewormer" is a clear smear tactic -- definitely not by an innocent actor. I personally went back-and-forth on whether Ivermectin was actually effective for early treatment on COVID. But whatever the ultimate answer is, censoring discussion about it, or lying by calling it animal medicine is clearly a dishonest tactic.
I do not care about Republican or Democart parties. I care about the truth. And now that we have access to both primary sources, studies and multiple sources of informations, no one has to take the establishment narrative at face value -- which is something done in corporate news channels such as CNN and MSNBC. At this point it's better to watch Tucker Carlson on Fox, because at least there you'll get an anti-establishment view, which any decent person should always strive for.
As I said before, I am triple-vaxxed. I am not against vaccines, but I am against the lies, power grabs and censorship that have plagued us since the beginning of this pandemic. The push for the vaccines has forced mainstream media and tech companies to censor any discussion on potential early treatments that were being researched (hydroxychrloroquine [which now we know is not effective], ivermectin, monocolonal antibodies, etc...), some of which were actually proven to be very effective. This is absolutely insane. The vaccine itself is not 100% effective, so why silence this information?
It is funny how when the vaccine was developed under Trump, both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were "promoting vaccine hesitancy" a crime which now gets you deplatformed and declared a social pariah: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/campaign-press-rel...
I don't even want to get started about the inaccurate COVID mortality reporting, and how actually extremely low the deaths from COVID-only are, especially for people younger than 50 - as opposed of people dying "with COVID" and a ton of other comorbidities.
Parent Comment was referring to Joe Rogan frequently asserting that Ivermectin is an effective treatment for COVID. There is no evidence that this is true, and in fact, off-label and unsupervised use of a drug like ivermectin is incredibly dangerous. The misinformation about ivermectin forms a tent-pole in his incredibly dangerous war against the COVID vaccine.
No one is arguing Ivermectin isn't an amazing horse dewormer...
At least in the US, ivermectin requires a prescription to obtain. This means a medical professional (MD or nurse practitioner) believes it is safe for use with that individual and they are supervising it.
This is a misleading rebuttal. There were countless stories about feed stores running out of stock or having to limit sales because people were buying it for personal use in huge volumes. There was literally a US wide shortage of agricultural ivermectin in August/September, and I’m not sure if it’s gotten any better.
His previous method of distribution was YouTube, which notoriously removes and demonetizes content without warning or appeal, so the move to Spotify was meant to guard against that.
I suppose at this point he could easily fund hosting the content himself if he can get out of the contract with Spotify.
We may agree by this definition. But when the public redefine podcast as something else, like “recorded talkshow audio”, you can only reinforce the definition so much.
Then Spotify came busting in and decided that the open podcasting platform is obsolete and paid Joe Rogan $100 million for exclusive distribution of his content. So they’ve dug their own grave here.
Rogan has too. He didn’t have to take the deal that removed his podcast from open distribution and put it under corporate control. But he did. And he paved the way for many others to go down the same path and erode the open podcasting ecosystem. If he hadn’t done it he’d have none of these problems. So he’s dug his own grave too.
I wish both parties nothing but the best in digging their way out of the mess they created for themselves.