Spotify is removing Neil Young’s music after falling out over Joe Rogan
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
On one of his recent podcasts, he supports fox news keeping it's guests from specific no-no topics because they don't want to loose their credibility.
The irony, obviously, being that Joe should also keep his guests and himself away from certain no-no topics. That's the thing though. Joe doesn't see himself as a credible news source, a voice of a movement, or any of those other things because accuse him of. It's mainly just him hanging out with his buddies smoke'n (sometimes literally) and joke'n.
That's the entertaining and appeal of the show.
Edit
It's my fault for grouping them into the same sentence, but I didn't claim (or mean to) that his show is just junk entertainment because it's just people talking. My claim is that's the appeal of the format.
He obviously has credible and knowledgeable guests on his show. I said Joe doesn't see himself as a news source or a voice of a movement. Martial arts, working out, and DMT, however, yes he probably thinks of himself as someone to take advice from there.
It's egregiously ignorant to proclaim that his comments aren't taken seriously or don't have real life consequences. You don't get to dole out medical advice as a self-proclaimed expert and then hide behind "it's just entertainment, bro."
Also I've never heard him speak as an authority on anything other than stand-up comedy and MMA. Everything else I hear him ask his guests to clarify, like his recent episode with some skeevy psychologist/tech guy (Dr. Robert Epstein) who wasn't elaborating on dubious claims. At some point the guest was talking about Google "blocking the internet" and said condescendingly "Are you serious? You don't know this?" (my paraphrasing).
Joe just calmly responded with something along the lines of "Even if I do know this, my audience may not, so when I push back on you to elaborate or give more details or proof of a claim, it's not for me specifically". And yea, the guest was just a BS-er talking about big tech censorship, no Google can't block the internet, his claim ended up being about Google search and Chrome specifically.
Joe Rogan doesn't need to do these things if he's just "hanging out with his buddies smoke'n" but he also doesn't have an obligation to have provocateurs and hacks like robert malone or ben shapiro on his show. He does it because he knows his fanbase will listen to it, ingest the information, and then speak it as fact to their friends and family - and THAT is where the danger comes in. Furthermore, he also knows that parts of his fanbase will go wild to see their fringe views espoused by a guest on their favorite podcast, without Joe challenging them to back their claims up with facts. I'm sure he also knows that his listeners skew young and male, and impressionable young men have been radicalized to a dangerous degree on the internet. Having the same views on his podcast as conspiracy theory sites, for example, will undoubtedly make it easier for the bad actors running these sites to radicalize JRE listeners (who will then, of course, become a part of the fanbase that loves when their theories are given time on his show in some perverse feedback loop).
He has also inked a deal with the largest music streaming service in the world for more money than any of us will see in our entire lives - at that point I don't think you can even say he's just "hanging out" any more. It's facetious at best, and wilfully negligent at worst, to assume that no one thinks of him as an authority figure, because even if he's playing the everyman character his guests profess to be authority figures in their fields. If he doesn't seriously challenge their false claims or ask for evidence from credible sources, he's doing his listeners a disservice.
Also, on that note, "provocateurs and hacks"? The journal Nature, about as authoritative as you can get, has this to say about Malone:
"In late 1987, Robert Malone performed a landmark experiment. He mixed strands of messenger RNA with droplets of fat, to create a kind of molecular stew. Human cells bathed in this genetic gumbo absorbed the mRNA, and began producing proteins from it. Realizing that this discovery might have far-reaching potential in medicine, Malone, a graduate student at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, later jotted down some notes, which he signed and dated. If cells could create proteins from mRNA delivered into them, he wrote on 11 January 1988, it might be possible to 'treat RNA as a drug'. Another member of the Salk lab signed the notes, too, for posterity. Later that year, Malone’s experiments showed that frog embryos absorbed such mRNA2. It was the first time anyone had used fatty droplets to ease mRNA’s passage into a living organism."
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02483-w
So, he did (according to Nature) help invent mRNA, but he's a hack because he disagrees with the "scientific consensus" or something. Reasonable minds can differ on that.
A couple of posts back you said that the media never admits their mistakes.
That's just plain false.
CNN has issued numerous retractions, some quite high profile.
For example:
https://www.wired.com/1998/07/cnn-retraction/
> CNN chief Tom Johnson said in an on-air statement that CNN alone bears responsibility for the "serious faults" in TV reports and the related article in Time magazine. He said an internal investigation concluded that the claims could not be supported. He apologized to CNN viewers, Time staffers, and American military personnel.
or
https://www.latimes.com/business/hollywood/la-fi-ct-cnn-resi...
> CNN removed the story and all connecting links to it late Friday, saying the story did not meet its editorial standards. CNN also issued an apology to Scaramucci, who accepted it with a tweet on Saturday. “Everyone makes mistakes,” he wrote. “Moving on.”
or
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/08/28/trump-lawrence-odo...
> “Last night on this show I discussed information that wasn't ready for reporting,“ O‘Donnell said at the top of his show Wednesday night. “I did not go through the rigorous verification and standards process here at MSNBC before repeating what I heard from my source. Had it gone through that process I would not have been permitted to report it. I should not have said it on air or posted it on Twitter. I was wrong to do so.“
> “Tonight we are retracting the story,” he added. “We don‘t know whether the information is inaccurate. But the fact is, we do know it wasn‘t ready for broadcast, and for that I apologize.“
or
https://www.jpost.com/arab-israeli-conflict/msnbc-apologizes...
> MSNBC apologized for using “not factually accurate” maps in a segment discussing the violence that has erupted across Israel in recent weeks.
> “MSNBC Live” host Kate Snow acknowledged Monday that her show displayed maps describing present-day Israel as a Palestinian state in 1946, when the area was under British mandate rule. The series of maps shown last Thursday gave the impression that Palestinians had control over all of modern-day Israel and have continuously lost land since.
> “[I]n an attempt to talk about the context for the current turmoil in the Middle East, we showed a series of maps of the changing geography in that region,” Snow said. “We realized after we went off the air the maps were not factually accurate and we regret using them.”
I eagerly await your retraction of that false claim.
I was not speaking to that MSNBC or CNN has never made corrections broadly-speaking, but rather that they would not back down on a story that is now broadly considered (according to the Washington Post, no right-wing sympathizer) debunked.
Outside perspective: They're clearly all heavily pushing agendas that are only very thinly veiled as news, in between the actual news.
The US hardly has any objective reporting because any attempt at doing so has to weather a lot of shit from every direction and because such reporting just doesn't do as well. The left-leaning and "centrist" news love to lie by omission (just look at the Rittenhouse trial: nobody who actually saw the full trial would have been surprised by the result), while the right-leaning news tend to exaggerate and outright make shit up (for examples look no further than reporting on the BLM protests). Both do a fair amount of cherry-picking what to report on.
It's like people don't actually want news, but instead want to have their views confirmed. The only places on this globe that manage to actually have some semi-objective TV news do so because it is ingrained in their very culture to value those and because of unconditional (government) funding. And even there news have issues - because it's still only people deciding what to report on and how.
Having programmes that the whole political spectrum can watch goes a long way towards having a dialogue and finding common ground.
In any event this deplatforming needs to stop. It's just about the most effective way to polarize a society by forcing everyone on separate platforms.
People want news but people are the product more than the customer.
or lie by lying: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29774315
I also would let left-media (which I consider to be the majority) off the hook as not "exaggerate[ing] and outright mak[ing] shit up":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_2019_Lincoln_Memorial_...
Insurrection cop was hit on head (and killed) with fire extinguisher: https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-false-and-exaggerated-c...
There's also a lot of dodgy terminology too, like Trump "putting children in cages" which is a "right-style" (think of the children) provocation not dissimilar to anti-Semitic or witch-hunting misrepresentations.
If you changed the all encompassing word media to press the difference is clear
I'm sure Tucker Carlson ( who Joe Rogan DWARFS in terms of audience ) would also describe himself as a "talkshow host" ( legally he has to, since his show is for "entertainment value" only. )
Thank you for letting me know I may be holding an incorrect belief. More research required for me :)
*he also denies that he's the inventor, of course
On the other hand, the media generally doesn't make ridiculous pie-in-the-sky takes. Every once in a while they get it wrong (sometimes dangerously so) but not with anything near the same magnitude or frequency that a comparatively uneducated influencer does. And they do apologize, for small inaccuracies with an editor's note at the bottom and for large inaccuracies with a retraction published in the next edition of the paper. Newspapers HATE printing retractions, and they try very hard never to say something that would require it.
Joe rogan has no such compunctions - in fact, he's on the same playbook as so many influencers and provocateurs before him. If you say enough crazy stuff, and only apologize for the worst of it, people are eventually going to give up trying to get you to denounce any statements you've made which are only mildly crazy. Here's a great example [0] - Joe apparently said you shouldn't worry about taking the vaccine if you're young and healthy, and when he apologized he called himself a moron and said he was talking about OTHER people. That's insane: getting vaccinated regardless of age means a brush with covid is less severe, thus saving you a trip to the hospital - and a hospital bed is saved for someone who actually needs it (covid-related or not).
I empathize with your apathy, but I would strongly urge you to think about the difference between a news corporation that hires professional fact-checkers to confirm their articles and has a two-source policy on news, and a guy who wilfully admits he's a moron before continuing to spout potentially harmful views against vaccinating yourself during a pandemic.
[0]https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/joe-rogan-retracts-cor...
Edit: whoops, you edited your comment after I started to reply to you. I'll make this brief: Robert Malone may have invented mRNA vaccines, but he's still anti-vax and believes the vaccines made from his technology (or some derivative thereof) make covid worse. On his episode of JRE he said something called "mass formation psychosis" existed, and had something to do with COVID(?!?) which is a bald-faced lie. You can be an excellent scientist on the frontier of medical research and still be an idiot who has no business spreading your personal views. If Joe had fact-checked him, his opinions would have folded, but he didn't.
That was a huge, huge pie-in-the-sky take. The media is absolutely not above their own lunacy. Green Greenwald, the reporter who broke the news about Snowden, agreed that it was "this generation's WMDs in terms of media malfeasance."
https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1459242600179933190
My point is that the media is absolutely capable of getting things immensely wrong on incredible magnitude.
The President’s son is on record saying he was interested in getting info from Russia. If Trump didn’t collaborate, it wasn’t from lack of interest or effort. It was wrong, but not a pie-in-the-sky take.
[1] which provably did happen, except it was the Hillary Campaign that knowingly did so: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steele_dossier
That coverage was accurate. There was collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
It is clearly described here for example: https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy0126
> The Washington Post has now retracted dozens of articles, rewritten huge parts of stories, and basically admitted it was all a sham.
This is false and you provide no evidence for it.
> Green Greenwald, the reporter who broke the news about Snowden, agreed that it was "this generation's WMDs in terms of media malfeasance."
Greenwald is a disgraced journalist turned professional provocateur. I’m not surprised that you have to resort to quoting him to support an argument as ridiculous as “Russiagate was pie-in-the-sky”. You might as well quote Tucker Carlson.
> https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1459242600179933190
This references two Washington Post articles which have been corrected. The correction was specific to the identity of one source in the famous Steele dossier which made some of the more outlandish and salacious claims in the dossier. There is no other retraction. In particular none of the facts of the dossier are retracted. In any case, the FBI has since conducted their own investigation and published their findings. As far as I know the FBI has not retracted those findings and the press has not retracted any reporting on those findings. So what exactly are you talking about when you mention “dozens of retracted stories”? Where is your evidence?
Says who? He's unpopular (with the media), now he attacks the media; what gets to decide he's "disgraced"?
I guess one thing these two do have in common is that you do not like them.
To my knowledge it hasn't. I believe they continue to stand by their reporting. It's possible I missed a major retraction but I have no clue why they would have retracted their stories.
Here it is: https://taibbi.substack.com/p/aaugh-a-brief-list-of-official...
Most if not all the Russiagate claims have turned out to be false, but more critically, the media who reported them either willfully didn’t bother to validate the information or ran with it knowing it was false.
The best one was the FBI getting a search warrant based on an article by a reporter referencing an FBI source. How’s that for bullshit? Drop an anonymous tip to a reporter then use their article as proof your suspicion is valid.
Your source uses the word "warrant" in one section (in searchable text), #12, where the reporting was accurate in that warrants had been issued. Whether the warrant should have been issued is a different question.
You'll note I qualified searchable, because I have no desire to read the entire massive text of bullet points, although I did try to find relevant ones and your best example. I did try to scan it for other corrections (because this site believes in "text in screenshots), and they were all either minor [0] of they were correct reporting [1].
[0] Example: All 17 intelligence agencies didn't say X, only the agency who coordinates information between, oversees and synthesizes their information did (and the big three of CIA, FBI and NSA)
[1] Example: Report on Day X, Government investigating Y. Report on Day X + N, Government investigation into Y turns up Z. Sometimes the Z is "nothing". You know, or the warrant reporting example above.
Mass formation psychosis is a thing that does exist. It just means shared delusion. Psychologists steer clear of religion, but if you are atheist, beliefs in Gods would be a good example.
It basically just means erroneous groupthink. It absolutely has something to do with COVID, but people obviously argue over which side is delusional, or at least more delusional.
It's all a govt delusion to reduce power consumption at night, including blackouts in the name of "public safety".
Not picking on them, because Americans have way more delusional thinking when it comes to things like food safety, but its hard to use a delusion as an example/ proof to the deluded that... they're deluded.
It's not a lie. It's arguably unsubstantiated. The response to COVID, like shutting down schools for two years [1] to the enormous detriment of education [2], has been insane in its disproportionateness, and the claim that a type of mass hysteria is responsible is totally within the realm of the plausible, and the contra is certainly not the kind of clear cut fact that can justify calling the position a "bald-faced lie".
Classifying everything that opposes a particular agenda as the kind of indisputable lie that has no place being aired on any platform, is the path to a totalitarian society that censors views that are out of favor with the establishment.
[1] https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/schools-more-168-milli...
[2] https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/public-and-social-sector...
It's actually not insane at all:
https://vinayprasadmdmph.substack.com/p/uk-now-reports-myoca...
What's insane is calling such statements insane when the evidence isn't yet there to reach such a conclusion.
> On the other hand, the media generally doesn't make ridiculous pie-in-the-sky takes.
I have to disagree with this too. A lot of takes on Trump were pretty ridiculous. He's probably among the worst Presidents ever, but the blatant exaggerations during the Trump years were ridiculous.
Right or wrong, it was most definitely NOT insane: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/19/us/california-wildfires-g...
NY Times article: https://archive.md/I1TXF
Fauci is far more credible because he’s talking about what many hundreds of researchers have confirmed. When he’s talking about vaccines, he’s not just making things up but summarizing peer reviewed studies which have been extensively analyzed. Malone now avoids the scientific process because he knows that his claims aren’t rigorous enough to survive it, and he can profit by telling people that’s censorship rather than admitting inadequacy.
B. Fauci has had every position on every issue throughout the pandemic. No masks, then masks. No vaccine mandate, then vaccine mandate. Don't mask the children, then mask the children. Don't return to school, return to school, don't return to school. Lockdown for 2 weeks, keep it up for over a year. You might call it science changing. I consider it (as do many Americans at this point) an excuse for a dictator who doesn't know what he is doing to cover up his arbitrary decisions.
You’re similarly misrepresenting Fauci’s positions and the degree to which he represented a scientific consensus and how that changed over time as conditions changed (vaccines have been a clear win since the early days; the best way to return to schools safely was not as clear cut and the idea that we had a year long lockdown in the United States is just absurd). If you find batting at strawmen entertaining, have at it, but I don’t see much value.
When has Fauci said to keep lockdowns for over a year? You are making this stuff up.
Your lack of knowledge about media "owning up" to their mistakes is not evidence they don't. Because they do.
I'm sure most people don't see the difference between actual Journalists (and not necessarily with a degree) and some dude talking crap on a microphone but there is.
> "In late 1987, Robert Malone performed a landmark experiment.
Well, so f what? This is 20% of the work that lead us today
Apparently having done that work (if that was actually his actual work) doesn't prevent him from misrepresenting his work spouting crap 30 years after that.
Best definition for Robert Malone is that "he had as much influence on the vaccine as Graham Bell had on the Lady Gaga's song Telephone"
Lipid-mediated polynucleotide administration to deliver a biologically active peptide and to induce a cellular immune response (includes mRNA). P Felgner, JA Wolff, GH Rhodes, R Malone, D Carson. Assigned to Vical, Inc and licensed to Merck. No. 7,250,404, date of issue: 7/31/07 Cited in 105 articles. Priority Date: 3/21/1989.
Lipid-mediated polynucleotide administration to reduce likelihood of subject's becoming infected (includes mRNA). P Felgner, JA Wolff, GH Rhodes, Robert W Malone, D Carson. Assigned to Vical, Inc and licensed to Merck. US Pat. Ser. No. 6,867,195 B1. Date of issue: 3/15/05. Priority Date: 3/21/1989.
Generation of an immune response to a pathogen (includes mRNA). P Felgner, JA Wolff, GH Rhodes, Robert W Malone, D Carson. Assigned to Vical, Inc and licensed to Merck. US Pat. Ser. No. 6,710,035. Date of issue: 3/23/04. Citations: 39 articles. Priority Date: 3/21/1989.
Expression of exogenous polynucleotide sequences in a vertebrate, mammal, fish, bird or human (includes mRNA). P Felgner, JA Wolff, GH Rhodes, Robert W Malone, D Carson. Assigned to Vical, Inc, licensed to Merck. US Pat. Ser. No. 6,673,776. Date of issue: 1/6/04. Priority Date: 3/21/1989.
Methods of delivering a physiologically active polypeptide to a mammal (includes mRNA). P Felgner, JA Wolff, GH Rhodes, Robert W Malone, D Carson. Assigned to Vical, Inc, licensed to Merck. US Pat. Ser. No. 6,413,942. Date of issue: 7/2/02. (cited in 150 articles). Priority Date: 3/21/1989.
Induction of a protective immune response in a mammal by injecting a DNA sequence (includes mRNA). P Felgner, JA Wolff, GH Rhodes, Robert W Malone, D Carson. Assigned to Vical, licensed to Merck. US Pat. Ser. No. 6,214,804, date of issue: 4/10/01. Cited in 360 articles. Priority Date: 3/21/1989.
Induction of a protective immune response in a mammal by injecting a DNA sequence (includes mRNA). P Felgner, JA Wolff, GH Rhodes, Robert W Malone, D Carson. Assigned to Vical, Inc, licensed to Merck. US Pat. Ser. No. 5,589,466. Date of issue: 12/31/96. Cited in 899 articles. Priority Date: 3/21/1989.
Delivery of exogenous DNA sequences in a mammal (includes mRNA). Assigned to Vical, Inc, licensed to Merck. P Felgner, JA Wolff, GH Rhodes, Robert W Malone, D Carson. US Pat. Ser. No. 5,580,859. Date of issue: 12/3/96. Cited in 1244 articles. Priority Date: 3/21/1989.
Generation of antibodies through lipid mediated DNA delivery (includes mRNA). P Felgner, JA Wolff, GH Rhodes, Robert W Malone, D Carson. Assigned to Vical, Inc, licensed to Merck. US Pat. Ser. No. 5,703,055. Date of issue: 12/30/97. Cited in 419 articles. Priority Date: 3/21/1989.
5G mind control and human tracking via MRNA vaccine. Robert W Malone, Bill Gates.
Also all of those are result of the research directed by Felgner, granted to Vical (his own company), and highly hypothetical at the time. Unsurprisingly, most of those, if not all, have expired without putting a product in the market.
mRNA vaccine development has been incredibly incremental and spanning decades. Anyone claiming they're the inventor because they put a few pieces of the puzzle together is incredibly disingenuous.
Literally nowhere in the quote says that. An important step (if he actually was the main discoverer for those) but not "the inventor". He imagined it (in the same way I can imagine a flying car - but not invent it)
And Nature goes on: "But the path to success was not direct. For many years after Malone’s experiments, which themselves had drawn on the work of other researchers, mRNA was seen as too unstable and expensive to be used as a drug or a vaccine. "
Malone is mainly sour grapes https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/08/robert-m...
I have almost no respect for media that does attacks on character rather than attacks on ideas.
That information kills children as it may make people disregard the obvious symptoms and fatally delay treatment.
Thanks for providing your opinion on the article, it's a good gauge on how his fans see things.
That's kind of funny, because throughout history the people who were very critical of the scientific consensus (especially those who maintained this position even after lifting themselves up from a lower social status) are the ones who, on average, turned out to be right and either revolutionized that field or had an amazing insight that was a missing puzzle piece.
The mentality of 'scientific consensus says A, therefore B is bogus' does a lot more damage than people realize.Still, to be taken seriously you need to have some sort of proof or a sensible explanation of how you reached that conclusion.Here it's not as much that the guy is an incredible genius and is the only one with that position, but more of the fact that the critical voices almost entirely colluded.(This is de facto "proved" by the latest wave of western articles admitting that the narrative they adopted and pushed was done in an irresponsible fashion.See german press or even american outlets)
You are saying that on average, those going against scientific consensus are more often right than they are wrong? That sound like a load of bullshit.
And quantifying my statement is hard if you assume causality and you don't make distinction between levels of "radical thinking".Because i can give you 5-10 well-known historical figures who fit my description and make me look right, and you can say "here are 10000 conspiracy nuts from YT who make you look wrong".What I meant by 'are the ones who, on average, turned out to be right[...]' is that the more radical/higher level your thinking is, the better chances you are to be right if you made your case for them(again, I mentioned that those people do not change their stance with time,social status,environment).
Accepting scientific consensus >because< it is the consensus and upholding it as an orthodoxy is precisely why there's stagnation in many if not all the fields.And yes, the more radical,incorporating,exploratory you are in your thinking, the higher chances you probably have in being "right", assuming you are actually creating a superset of a scientific domain(i.e innovating) and not merely "go against the wave".To take my point home: 5000 flat earthers from YouTube who are undeniable wrong make my average "wrong" because they are going against the current scientific consensus.Is their thinking radical or incorporates existing knowledge into something more profound?Do they change the thinking about world, is it shockingly different?No, they're just saying the negation of a proposition, mostly based on 'loads of bullshit' without substance or regard to the consensus.We used to think the earth was flat.This is different from, say, "Here is a conjecture which lies at the limits of current knowledge about X[say gravity, or anything].You're all wrong at thinking about X/Y/Z in terms of A, my insight (often new) is better and vastly different."
The main issue here is that from a known understanding, a newer,different idea might seem wrong.It's the duty of the "contrarian" to prove his case.If one stays true to his motives and is not a hack it will serve them well.
> They had offered it to the United States National Museum, as the Smithsonian Institution was then known, in 1910. Officials at the Smithsonian, particularly Charles Walcott, were "anxious to redeem the reputation" of former director, Samuel Langley, who had spent thousands of government dollars trying to invent an airplane which he called an "aerodrome."
https://libraries.wright.edu/special/wrightbrothers/flyer/hi...
Plenty of scientists do great work in one topic and then also act like hacks at other times.
Yet it's been decried ever since as a mistake being based on fear rather than science, pushing stigma on segments of population in the name of compliance, and being so "overly cautious" that the damages (medical and social) far outweighed the benefits, even with its limited implementation.
Why does that sound so familiar?
History repeats itself.
Medical tyranny and cancel culture is just one form and the latest form of tyranny.
how often do "independent" media figures apologize or admit to making mistakes?
corporate media sucks, but their lies tend to be more about what they choose to present and what they choose to omit rather than made up facts.
Linus Pauling was one of the founders of molecular biology and spent part of his later life advocating that people megadose vitamin c to cure heart disease, something that could have very well hurt people who chose that over a more evidence-backed treatment.
Steve Jobs tried treating his cancer through juice cleanses until it became too late-stage to treat conventionally.
Malone really should not be given a platform. We know that being unvaccinated can make covid way more severe and puts you at 14x higher risk of death from covid, and there is a huge body of evidence on covid vaccine efficacy from the literal billions of people worldwide who have been vaccinated.
People will almost certainly die because he lends credibility to anti-vaccination arguments.
The surpreme court seems to agree with Malone as well.
Should the surpreme court be deplatformed?
You think government enforceable law is less important or does "less damage" than voluntary viewing an expert with an opinion?
Your views may not be as accurate as you believe.
Why should you or anyone else decide who should not have a voice for me to listen to?
Do I get to tell you who is to provocative to listen to?
But because our media is so entrenched the only challenge Rogan gets from conventional media are typical smeer campaigns that look disingenuous and erode trust even further. Vaccine hesitant people are never really addressed adequately by government or by conventional media. Distrust is at an all time high and the power structures of the world have never been so apparent to the every day man.
The solution to all of this is transparency, discussion and health policy that targets the problems rather than blanket policy that ostracises and discriminates.
Suppression will only make the situation worse because all of a sudden we on a slippery slope to totalitarianism where (automated) fact checkers are the primordial source of truth and authority.
Ostracising will only make the situation worse because all of a sudden we have very large portions of the community (upward of 25% in countries like Germany) now feel discriminated against, people cannot get on planes and travel to see loved ones, they cant go the cinema, they cant do basically anything, all because they object to handling of health policy. Further more politicians like Macron are stoking divisions even further and marginalizing these people by proclaiming they are non-citizens.
Shit, I cant really imagine a better way to fracture western society. In my mind the virus really did win.
This is the challenge Dennis Prager often offers to young college students in his audience. It is comically grotesque to see a senior professional debater and speaker take joy when he shuts down a young nervous challenger. Sure, you and I can think of quick responses, in the same way when we watch a boxing match and can see where the challenger made a mistake. But in a real life arena most of us would probably take a beating when matched against a pro.
A sincere debate can be had when one is willing to steel-man the other's argument but that's not an option when being right and winning is your opponent's brand.
Maybe to people who only follow crap on facebook and refuse to read "mainstream media" then misrepresent what they show. Mainstream medis is not saying what fb is parroting.
Because this has been ongoing for the most part. But hey it's boring and not written in capital letters so nobody reads it
> then it needs to be challenged, not suppressed.
You've just proven that people don't do that. Thanks. There's no better evidence than your post that people are too stupid to get out of their bubbles
> we have very large portions of the community (upward of 25% in countries like Germany) now feel discriminated against, people cannot get on planes and travel to see loved ones, they cant go the cinema, they cant do basically anything
Of course they can, they just have to stop being idiots. And if they won't do that by themselves the virus will do it for them
Unfortunately, it's one-way only. You can't "get into the arena" disagreeing (for example) with the institution same-sex marriage without calls for deplatforming, Facebook bans and (for example) Neil Young trying to get your content removed.
I start by listening to people before disagreeing with them.
I know that is a radical idea, but I think prejudice isn’t good.
People are not rational beings who will disregard an idea because it is incorrect. The debunking is instead an attack on the person's identity or one of their friends. What you really need to do if you disagree with somebody is befriend and get them to have an emotional attachment to the same ideas you do
Ah yes, Ben Shapiro will radicalize young men to... get married and start a family? I really don't understand the harm from the examples you mentioned. He offers alternative voices that don't get much attention by CNN or NYT. Literally every other media outlet will have the same 5 or 10 same talking heads and officials telling you the science du jour.
Ben Shapiro is pro-vax, does not believe the election was stolen, and has had the FBI arrest alt-right people who made death threats against him multiple times over the years. "Poster child of the movement?" Unless you consider alt-right to be completely the same as far-right, that was never the case. No movement makes death threats against their poster child.
It’s kind of a useless label at this point, since it’s thrown around so much.
So more a label that they slapped on themselves.
A white nationalist launched a webzine called “The Alternative Right”.
Then “His term was shortened to "alt-right" and popularised by far-right participants of /pol/, the politics board of web forum 4chan.”
So other people used the term alt-right and somehow it’s linked to a webzine?
But anyways, thanks for the link, I wasn't aware that at least wikipedia makes that connection. I've alway heard "alt-right" used as "a vague collection of far right people that fall outside the Republican Party". So they could include white supremacists, but aren't exclusively white supremacists.
This is so easy to say about someone you disagree with. But the other side will say the same about your heroes.
Almost anyone in the public eye will say things to get in the public eye. That's what they are good at. In politics, those things will be by definition controversial to some people. Not to mention the opposing media will purposefully twist what you say into controversial things.
I don't see how Ben shapiro is special in this in any way.
What's with these people with pitchforks for the Ben Shapiros and the "others" of the world?
I hear all these bad things about the "others". How crazy the "others" are. I believe it.
Then when I look into and research those "other" people they are usually totally reasonable.
I don't understand all the hate for the "others".
Covid struck and I became increasingly disappointed with the information I was receiving. It began conflicting with actual scientific research I was reading. I stepped outside my bubble. Boy is the world a bigger and more interesting place. Ben Shapiro promotes old timey family and economic values. That's it. His views would be mildly left to anyone in the 70s or 80s. Of course, to some, old timey family and economic values make him "literally Hitler." Not to me. I don't agree with most of his values but I also think he has a right to speak and discuss his views. He's clearly not crazy, and the world has space for people who believe in nuclear families and proletarian work ethics.
I'll never again make the mistake of not challenging the information I consume. I am now very suspicious of anyone who tells me that challenging authority is wrong.
He makes this statement in that article: "Any incident of white-cop-on-black-suspect violence must be chalked up to the racist system" -- as an attempt to discredit system racism. Only those on the far right believe this. I don't believe Ben himself believes this, but I do believe that he understands that his target market loves it. It's an absurd statement.
The whole article completely misses what system racism is about and why its a useful construct to eliminate racism. Again, Ben seems like a relatively bright guy who I think probably actually understands it. I think that his financial interest is in not understanding, convoluting it, and selling to a group that is willing to suck this up.
The old timey values group wants us to stop talking about all this race stuff. Blacks have it better now than ever before -- what more do they want?! And don't get them stated on the gays and Muslims. But Shapiro pushes it in a way that outright racists can read it and say, "Hey this respectable guy says what I think -- except he uses Harvard JD words to say it!"
> Only those on the far right believe this
I as hyperbolic as the phrase you are critical of, and equally absurd.
To get frustrated that nobody is willing to do that with them.
That's not the bit that people have a problem with, and it's completely disingenuous to frame it that way. They have a problem with his views on transgender people, his views on gay people, his views on same-sex parents, and the views of the people he supports and spreads the agenda of.
All that "you don't get to decide", "and that's where danger comes in".
I think the reasoning in your head is actually backwards, and you think that because JRE got Spotify contract he now has to "be doing their research" in fear of losing it. It's all about money, eh?
You cannot, and shouldn't, sculpt a model of society where anyone who speaks out loud needs to speak with journalistic and scientific integrity. It cannot work; it never has, and it never will. Regimes which try to limit free speech fail, unfailingly.
You should push for more critical listening. The most surefire way to underdevelop your ability for critical thought and listening is to bubble the content you consume to only professional sources, mainstream news, and government spokespeople. So, don't listen to Rogan, or anyone else you disagree with; you're dumber for it. Not because everything he says is right; but because you'll slowly lose the skill of not just taking everything at face value, but thinking critically about why he's wrong, integrating the things said on his show with your own experiences, other media you've consumed, what scientists say, what politicians say, what random hackernews commentors say, and forming a holistic opinion about the world.
Not everyone has that skill; either by choice, accident, or otherwise. And that's the second skill you need to develop: being ok that some people will believe the wrong thing. They'll spread it. People will die; that's what people do. Think on how spectacular our world is; most of it exists in the only time in human history where freedom of speech is so protected; and some choose to desire to throw that precious right away to... save lives? Our collective freedom and values are far, far more important than life; I hope, beyond hope, that they'll outlive me.
Religion has done this world a lot of bad. In fact, many would be surprised with how recently the Vatican's crackdown on freedom of speech led to many scientists being unable to discover the nature of reality; that's what happens when we don't cherish freedom of speech. But, one thing it did do right, and with it one thing many have lost in our society: the collective recognition that there are goals for our species greater than life itself.
When someone says something wrong, or something I disagree with: I cherish your right to say it, here, in this forum. You shouldn't be labeled as disinformation; nor censored with a downvote. We should have a discussion.
I dont think he's had a single guest on with fringe views. At least 30 to 40% of America is unvaccinated.
Hardly fringe.
Also, fringe does not equate with being wrong. The view that marijuana should be legal was once a "fringe" view.
According to modern standards of social media censorship, all of these "fringe views" would very likely lead to getting banned and/or silenced for "misinformation". The fact is that the accuracy of a belief has absolutely no relationship to how widespread that belief is. This is especially true when the government, big tech and their legacy media outlets work together to engineer a consensus view (or the appearance of a consensus view) that hews to their preferred narrative rather than reality.
Fringe views need a platform because they're right ALOT.
I'm sure he may have some fringe views but so does Neil Degrassi Tyson and everyone else.
Define fringe views.
Edit: I'll give you the benefit of the doubt on whether you've never actually heard of or seen alex jones, here's a quick rundown
How do you know you're not the one being radicalized?
Have you ever tried to listen to Alex in good faith even if you don't agree and try to understand his view at least? Or is your entire perception based off of John Oliver?
Do you think you could pick 20 seconds out of John Olivers footage and make him look like a crazy person?
> impressionable young men have been radicalized to a dangerous degree on the internet. Having the same views on his podcast as conspiracy theory sites, for example, will undoubtedly make it easier for the bad actors running these sites to radicalize JRE listeners
Some would say that claiming the outcome of free speech is radicalization...to be pure idiocy.
And this cancel culture lockdown mentality is possibly why mid terms are going to rough for the left.
ok, here's 5 full hours https://youtu.be/-5yh2HcIlkU
> How do you know you're not the one being radicalized?
How do you know you're not the one being radicalized?
> Have you ever tried to listen to Alex in good faith even if you don't agree and try to understand his view at least? Or is your entire perception based off of John Oliver?
I have, he's entertaining. I don't take a single thing seriously. I've spent some time researching on thing he's said, all of it was gross mischaracterizations and exaggerations on any topic. I won't spend any more. I'm not a journalist, that's their job.
> Do you think you could pick 20 seconds out of John Olivers footage and make him look like a crazy person?
That would be fantastic, go ahead. This isn't idolatry.
> Some would say that claiming the outcome of free speech is radicalization...to be pure idiocy.
Well, it is through free speech that radicalization does happen, however, nobody is talking about free speech here. because alex jones can still say whatever he wants. (as long as he can pay for libel/slander fines), you can exercise free speech. deplatforming has nothing to do with free speech.
I've heard criticisms of Rogan for giving people like Jones a platform, but in the end I can't believe it helps Jones. He came off as a lunatic in the show I heard.
It's not just Malone; over 17k doctors and scientists have signed the Rome Declaration in support of his message: https://doctorsandscientistsdeclaration.org/.
It's very hard to take this seriously, because there's no evidence of it. The guy is an entertainer that built a platform that lets him talk to whoever he wants. There's no narrative being pushed.
> Joe Rogan [has PEOPLE I DISAGREE WITH] on his show.. THAT is where the danger comes in.
Meh! I would rather listen to people's original perspectives despite of potential inaccuracies, instead of lies fabricated by corporations via highly paid "experts".
Yeah, in a very specific meaning of "listen to everyone", as in he clearly listened to the people advocating Ivermectin to trait covid but not the vaccine, which to me seems like tribalism as such decision is not based on listening to anyone making a bit of sense.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/5DuxGhOJSa7X0AKvJGwwta?si=T...
"This sort of credulity is both Rogan’s biggest draw and his worst tendency. Rogan has built his brand around open-mindedness, which he passes off as “free thinking.” But in practice, instead of thinking about what his guests are saying to him, Rogan’s first instinct is to “mmhm” his way through topics that frequently stray into conspiracies, bigotry, or simple stupidity. Rogan’s guiding ethos doesn’t seem to be much more complicated than “seek out the controversial, and popular,” which has led him, during the pandemic, to repeatedly platform or publish misinformation about coronavirus and vaccines. "
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/jordan-pet...
At this stage of the pandemic we know that much of the MSM has done the same thing. I'm triple vaccinated, I have followed this pandemic since late January 2020, at the time when "coronavirus" as a hashtag was seen as a trump-ism and not present on Twitter's front page or wherever it is that they publish their hot hashtags.
You mean his instinct is to let his guests speak and let the listeners make up their own mind? I wonder why Rogan is so popular.
> Rogan’s guiding ethos doesn’t seem to be much more complicated than “seek out the controversial, and popular,” which has led him, during the pandemic, to repeatedly platform or publish misinformation about coronavirus and vaccines.
Rogan has stated openly many times that his guiding ethos is literally to have people on that he finds interesting or wants to learn more about. I've seen nothing to really contradict this. This likely just intersects with controversial and/or popular in some or many cases, but it's disingenuous to then claim that this was the motive all along.
If he hosted some kind of a salon with competing views where he never took a stance and just let the conversation unfold that might be the case, but he regularly injects himself and varying degrees of "information" into the conversation to color and steer it. Each guest is in a vacuum where for their time on his show where they're more or less unchallenged and unfettered by reality.
To be clear I don't think his show should be censored, but I think his fans need to be a bit more honest with themselves and others. He makes people feel safe to settle in and listen to bullshit, believe the bullshit, and then say "it's just entertainment, this isn't where I get my opinions - by the way let me fill you in on all my obviously Rogan informed opinions."
Sure, when something requires clarification because it seems inconsistent with his understanding or what's common knowledge. Even an impartial moderator would do that. It still remains the case that his instinct is to let the guests talk, because he invited them there to learn more about them.
That said, Rogan certainly states his own opinions sometimes too, more so and more forcefully on certain topics that he's discussed many times and so he has developed more certainty. I used to watch more of his podcasts a few years ago, and he was much more open and less certain on some topics. Recently he's expressed more certainty on those topics because he's had so many discussions on them that his certainty is higher.
I would certainly welcome more guests with opposing views, but a lot of those people wouldn't go on his podcast simply because he "gives a platform" to their opponents.
Irregardless of what Joe says about himself and the show being nothing more than a bunch of idiotic guys talking, the truth of the matter is he does have credible and subject matter experts come on his show and talk and give their viewpoint on their area of expertise.
However when those experts come on and they go against the MSM narrative then the focus becomes about Joe and his silly tactics as a way to dismiss or downplay the counter views for some.
And since the beginning of Covid Joe Rogan has stopped being just a dude who hangs out and smokes with his buddies, something I used to love about the show. He is constantly and consistently political, making medical claims and other kinds of claims that are nonsensical. He’s started favoring certain types of guests, and avoiding the friends who call him out.
I used to argue vehemently that free speech can be infringed upon under no circumstance. I still will. But now I see the “other side” more clearly, that is, where is the line when someone has one of the largest platforms in the world and uses it to spread dangerous misinformation? He’s way past just some dude. I have friends who take what he says as gospel, because they want to learn how to be men and Joe is a man’s man. At the same time, he does make good arguments in favor of discourse, hearing different viewpoints, etc. so how do we handle this?
> The labels themselves are neither false nor defamatory; to the contrary, they constitute protected opinion.
All media sources hide behind "being just entertainment and not factual opinion" just like the New York Times or MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, who, when she was sued for saying OAN is "paid Russian propaganda”, won the case because “The statement could not reasonably be understood to imply an assertion of objective fact, and therefore, did not amount to defamation”[2] even though MSNBC couldn't prove OAN was paid by Russia.
[1]: https://wattsupwiththat.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Faceb... [2]: https://thehill.com/homenews/media/568213-oan-loses-appeal-i... "paid Russian propaganda”
That would be infinitely more engaging than a clickbait headline and 3 minutes from an “expert” on CNN/MSNBC/Fox.
Sounds like something an expert in a field would a) not have enough time to do, b) usually lack the charisma to do and c) draw them away from arguably more pertinent tasks, such as research?
I think a better course of action would be to stop believing one can be educated on topics they know nothing about, and without context, purely by passively absorbing information from podcasts.
People have the ability to remember and compare similar statements and events. Double standards applied unfairly tend to get remembered for a very long time. I think the best thing would be to apply even standards across the board for “misinformation”, and tend towards less rather than more censorship.
https://www.foxnews.com/media/cnn-jim-acosta-virginia-soviet...
> CNN host Jim Acosta on Tuesday suggested Virginia was being run like a "Soviet-style police state" under new Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin.
> During a segment on his fill-in primetime show, Acosta, while making the comparison, cited an email tip line set up by Youngkin's administration in which parents can report teachers that teach "divisive" topics to their children, such as critical race theory, while also mocking the way Youngkin dressed.
which is hyperbole about hyperbole. Then you read it from realpolitics:
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2022/01/26/cnns_acos...
> CNN's Jim Acosta recognized that the country is divided, and he had someone to blame during a Tuesday segment with Molly Jong Fast.
> "It seems Republican leaders have gone all-in on dividing the country in many ways," Acosta said.
> "I seem to remember Glenn Youngkin campaigning in a fleece vest in Virginia. He was running as a different kind of Republican. I was told there was going to be a vest, not a Soviet-style police state across the Potomac from Washington," he said about the new Virginia governor.
Who spend most of their time quoting what Acosta actually said in one block (while FoxNews shuffles the quotes around so it would fit their narrative). The news is basically trash these days. Of course, once it comes out that the governer basically instituted a tip line to out teachers who might be teaching something construed as critical race theory, all the non-far right wingers are already on board with Acosta's outrage.
>For the purposes of this Executive order “inherently divisive concepts” means advancing any ideas in violation of Title IV and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, including, but not limited to of the following concepts (i) one race, skin color, ethnicity, sex, or faith is inherently superior to another race, skin color, ethnicity, sex, or faith; (ii) an individual, by virtue of his or her race, skin color, ethnicity, sex or faith, is racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or subconsciously, (iii) an individual should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment solely or partly because of his or her race, skin color, ethnicity, sex or faith, (iv) members of one race, ethnicity, sex or faith cannot and should not attempt to treat others as individuals without respect to race, sex or faith, (v) an individual's moral character is inherently determined by his or her race, skin color, ethnicity, sex, or faith, (vi) an individual, by virtue of his or her race, skin color, ethnicity, sex, or faith, bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race, ethnicity, sex or faith, (vii) meritocracy or traits, such as a hard work ethic, are racist or sexist or were created by a particular race to oppress another race.
Full text here:
https://www.governor.virginia.gov/news-releases/2022/january...
> They are clearly a mouthpiece for one of two sides, like other “news” organizations.
I've realized in my conversations with Rogan fans and Fox News fans alike, to them all lies are equal, everyone lies, nothing is true, so they pick the things they like as truths. These people will tell you Joe Rogan is an entertainer not to be listened to, and then spout off a bunch of opinions they got from his show as their reasons for all kinds of decisions.
They carried out a disinformation campaign using half-truths. They could complain that this tactic is valid because Ivermectin is ineffective for Covid. But they junked their credibility with the horse nonsense.
These are adults you’re talking about - either you believe the have the capacity to validate what they here on their own or you don’t.
Humans are messy, someone will hear idea A (good) and turn it into idea B (bad). Some will be told the right thing and choose not to do it.
We don’t suddenly treat all adults like children (which is what censoring Rogan would be) just because a few decide to make stupid decisions.
> That's the entertaining and appeal of the show.
Facebook's press releases talk just like that. They also pretend to be "neutral".
But Rogan, Facebook and Spotify made choices with repercussions and consequences. They just don't want to bear responsibility/accountability for those consequences.
And, no, I don't use both Facebook or Spotify.
So by your own admission you haven’t listened to Rogan’s Spotify podcast?
The corporate media attacks on him make no sense to me.
It's a freaking podcast where he talks about sports, hunting, UFOs, the supernatural, comedians, ai, and yes conspiracy theory.
I enjoy the variety and the wild topics.
When you have an audience numbering in the millions, and have a long term presence (unlike old school radio), you are a news source, whether you like it or not.
And you have a responsibility to be careful with your words, whether you want it or not.
In this age of boundless social media, where what is true, what is false and what is mis-leading is non-existent, it is pertinent for people like JRE to absolutely not go into topic they don't know or knowledgeable about.
I would really like to see him bring on Dr. Fauci, and have a good listen to him.
Joe's conversation with Dr Sanjay covered a variety of topics (Covid, marijuana policy, CNNs representation of Joe). On all these topics Dr Sanjay was definitely given an opportunity to make his argument - and I believe he probably reached a good number of people through Joe's platform.[1]
It is unfortunate that CNN's unprofessional representation of Joe's personal experience with Covid sucked up so much of the conversation around the episode. Dr Sanjay wasnt a part of this (until after the podcast...) And on the podcast he also took issue with CNN's coverage. Obviously this didn't go well over at CNN and I truly felt bad for Dr Sanjay being publicly steamrolled by the networks own talking heads in the days after. [2]
On their Covid discussion Joe raised some points that he has spoken about in other forums - they shouldn't surprise anyone. Primary among them are how we should account for natural immunity, clarity on the risk of side effects for children versus the risk of Covid, and treatments beyond vaccines (which given how frequently breakthru cases occur should be important conversation for pro/hesitant/anti vax alike).
These are things that Dr Sanjay (or Dr Fauci) should be able to have a meaningful discussion around. Dr Sanjay did a good job in my opinion (and his own opinion [3]) Honestly I think the feedback that talking heads should not speak with authority they don't have is something Don Lemon needs to reflect on. I think there is general disappointment in the mainstream press for not asking challenging questions and that it is related to the growing distrust of the 4th estate. Today's media has soundbytes, cheer leading puffery, and context free gotchas.
1: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6rAgS1KiUvLRNP4HfUePpA?si=C...
2: https://youtu.be/oHWkvaQmxvI?start=124
3: https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/10/13/health/sanjay-gupta-joe-r...
He doesn’t make any claim that is show is anything more than two people chatting. If anyone is using JRE as a trusted news source, then they are an idiot. You can’t stop people from being idiots, nor should we attempt to childproof the entire world on their behalf.
I guess you can't stop people from being idiots, but there's no harm in trying.
I have tuned in reasonably regularly. I think what they say on there is generally what the person saying it believes to be correct.
"Generally correct" is a much lower bar than "always correct". It might even be a bar that JRE can pass.
Edit: where they're talking about factual matters I mean, not where they talk about aliens, big foot, and other obviously outlandish ideas where they're clearly just shooting the breeze.
You can claim he giving another side to the "Mainstream media", but does he give in depth interviews with scientists who are little more than quotes in the media? or is he more focused on giving the "Other side"
Eg, he just had that idiot Peterson spouting climate rubbish, has he had credible climate scientists on his show?
It's like a heart surgeon claiming architects have building design all wrong.
FWIW, I have no context on the specific claims made by Peterson, but I've increasingly seen a line of logic that suggests you need to have a PhD in a topic in order to think critically about it.
Sample Weather Channel Guy: - No history in psychology - Citing papers that are not highly respected under peer review
Sample Psychologist: - Has a long history in the field - Ideally has references available for their own claim
In this case, you'd probably want to err on the side of trusting the second person in the chart. What didn't happen, though, was a complete dismissal of the first person's claim based on credentials alone. If you have to make a decision on something quickly and authority is the only way for you to judge it, then sure, go for it. But appeal-to-authority doesn't belong in open-ended debates.
Edit: Apparently he had Peter Attila on who is pro-vaccine, but that's hardly a leading expert on the topic, and there's still a clear bias in the guests Joe invites to his show.
Joe Rogan isn’t anti-vaccine. His stance on the Covid-19 vaccine is if you’re older, fat, or with an existing comorbidity you should go get vaccinated. For everyone else it isn’t strictly necessary and shouldn’t be a requirement.
It basically comes down to individualist versus collectivist. If you’re a collectivist you think JRE is spreading misinformation.
The mainstream media push against podcasting is really a fight to hold for their power.
People who think they have the power to tell people "what's going on" are annoyed that a mere "podcaster" can also do the same nowadays. It's pretty interesting when you start to notice the derogatory tone mainstream-media celebrities use when talking about podcasts. The idea that some rando (in their mind) can just skirt the whole path they suffered through to get where they are, and have enough power to have their say and affect people's mind. People in this group include people like Don Lemon, Chris Cuomo, Matt Lauer, Jake Tapper, etc...
Those television journalists have it in their mind that they're the authority, and their authority is being challenged now by the fact that a podcaster is becoming more and more of a big-shot.
It's pretty much the same push initially against youtube, social-media, and possibly even the internet, before corporate media managed to find a way to use those tools to their benefit. This also explains the push for monitoring, regulating (aka controlling) what's being said via this medium.
Mainstream media is not just TV "journalism", but also the rapidly deteriorating online/print journalism:
- https://www.brookings.edu/techstream/the-challenge-of-detect...
- https://theguardian.com/media/2020/dec/12/sinister-sounds-po...
- https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/7/22821823/joe-rogan-media-...
So Neil Young represents mainstream media?
As far as I can tell, this was a personal initiative from Neil Young, so your points against the arrogance of mainstream media people might be legit, but with no connection to this case.
Showing an openness to discussion would have been so much better for his case.
Hell yes - there is way too much fanatism in this whole debate and I am frankly quite disappointed with Neil Young's initiative. This is not rocking the free world for me.
I quite disagree. But say thats true, so what? Whether he's some rando or not, we should be able to choose who we want to listen to. Shout out to the "muh private company" peeps. I know you're out there
I frequently get annoyed at Joe and as an interviewer I think he got worse over time (perhaps ego). But I respect immensely that
- He stands for free speech and freedom of the arts. And has always done so consistently.
- He still comes out often to admit he is wrong or just an idiot on some topic.
- He has never called for the censorship of anyone else, in stark contrast to figures like Don Lemon, Rachel Maddow.
- Finally, he has on a variety of guests, his interview with Bernie Sanders was great, and the first time I understood more nuanced ideas of his politics.
I read that differently: it’s not raw intelligence but the self-image of being an intellectual without actually doing the homework — like the people who have various hot takes based on some post they read who then start doing the “mainstream science is wrong about …” dance with the voice of authority but no actual understanding of the field. We’ve seen that a lot during the pandemic with various claims about things like HCQ, Ivermectin, vitamin D, etc. where people would a strong position that something worked but really had no expertise in the field to assess those claims.
Rogan is dangerous because he’s an entertainer who needs controversy to sell hundreds of millions of dollars in viewership but a lot of his audience think he’s giving them something more than that.
By that logic, Neil Young is also dangerous. Technically they're both as dangerous as any other media personality or entertainer with a mic (or platform) and an opinion. You shouldn't be listening to Rogan without questioning, nor should you listen to MSM without questioning. Treating what they say as something that needs to be curtailed is at best patronizing to the millions of people that are in the audience, and autocratic/authoritarian at worst.
Saying that he's specifically dangerous (without highlighting that it's the same for others in MSM) is in fact dangerous because it's cherry picking what fits your biased narrative.
When you try to dismiss that as a “biased narrative” or “authoritarian” it demonstrates the danger of this intellectual sloppiness: you’re conflating two positions as equally worthy of attention without acknowledging that one of them has near-unanimous consensus among experts and has been extensively validated. Trying to “both sides this without accounting for that weight is making you less informed, not more.
How is Neil Young adding any value to the world by this action? Do you really see Joe as a threat to something? What is it?
It's especially interesting to see you attack the scientific consensus as a “biased narrative” because that's what you are actually trying to promote. The scientific process isn't perfect but it includes a lot of effort to avoid bias, starting with how things like experiments are designed and conducted. Claiming that someone else's politically-motivated position deserves equal weight is revealing that the problem here isn't bias but rather that it's not biased in the direction you would like.
What makes you think he does that? And if so, isn't this exactly the same thing that MSM does?
Then again if you read my comment carefully, you can see that I'm not "dismissing" what Neil himself is saying/doing, but what the comment I'm replying to did, which is labeling one thing as dangerous and the other as not. Which IMO is dangerous for the opinion holder themselves because it eradicates any chance of self-inspection.
I'd really like you to specify as clearly and concisely as possibly why you think the two positions are not equally worthy of my attention:
- A) the experts that are pro something
- B) the experts that are against something
Is it just the "near-unanimous consensus" as you put it? How is it near-unanimous? and who's consensus is it? And does consensus make things unquestionable? Not exactly clear on what you're trying to say.
Or are you saying that the people Rogan brings on are not experts? Or were experts and not anymore? If so, please provide some examples.
Now, that might be a sad, slightly comical end to a career if it was something harmless — similar to how, say, the creationists would latch onto one guy with a Ph.D in something science-related to say there was a controversy — but it’s medical malpractice at a time when thousands of people are dying daily and vaccination lowers that number by at least an order of magnitude.
Malone is the discoverer of in-vitro and in-vivo RNA transfection [1] and architect of mRNA vaccine platform (check the 9 patents he holds) [2].
Please don't take what I'm saying here as an attack on you personally, but what makes you capable of saying that he's not an expert on "what other people subsequently did over the next 3 decades". And what sort of credentials you personally have to say that whatever medication he's endorsing "don’t work", or that "he’s no longer willing to meet the standards of being a scientist". What are those standards? Is it that he's not part of the consensus you're speaking of?
With that being said, I'm absolutely NOT saying that he is right and the others are wrong either. But to pretend that he's dangerous and others are not just because he doesn't bias in the direction you like is not a good reason really to dismiss it, or to want to brand whatever show he gets hosted on as "dangerous" for doing so. He has as much right to say his mind as others. He's no more dangerous than Anthony Fauci or any other expert involved.
1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC297778/pdf/pnas...
That’s what matters when discussing his expertise on the subject of the COVID vaccine. It doesn’t matter how great he might have been at one of the many parts of the scientific process which got us here, what matters is the topic we’re actually discussing. Scientists are not like you see in the movies: nobody is an expert at everything and they’re not perfect, either — that’s why the process is built around adversarial review since everyone makes mistakes. Linus Pauling was a Nobel laureate and by all accounts a brilliant researcher but that didn’t mean he was right about vitamin megadoses.
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/08/robert-m...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/01/23/dc-anti-v...
Like what? From your Atlantic piece this seems to be the closest to a false claim and its pretty underwhelming. These pieces read more like I should be upset because he appears is in the same sentence as Steve Bannon or the Proud Boys than the actual content of what he has said.
"Malone may keep company with vaccine skeptics, but he insists he is not one himself. His objections to the Pfizer and Moderna shots have to do mostly with their expedited approval process and with the government’s system for tracking adverse reactions. Speaking as a doctor, he would probably recommend their use only for those at highest risk from COVID-19. Everyone else should be wary" [1]
> and speaking at antivax events.
The one linked in your second article is an Anti-Vaccine Mandate event, which is not the same thing as being anti vaccine. It's possible to appreciate the benefits of vaccines and simultaneous think the government shouldn't force everyone to take one.
1. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/08/robert-m...
In other words you are so concerned about the credibility of one person, but you don’t seem to care that the entire field has compromised its own credibility by the behavior of its leading figures and key institutions.
Consensus among experts hasn't meant anything more than protection of the ruling class. See Wright brothers and even vaccination for other examples.
The story of Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family definitely exposes issues with the FDA, but I'm not sure it's a good example of expert consensus getting it wrong. (Not to say that expert consensus is always right.)
While Joe Rogan frequently calls himself an idiot (meaning it in the sense that we are all idiots about certain topics, but especially him since he often covers topics that are new to him) while bringing in smart people with opposing views and learning from them.
One of these people is representing himself more honestly than the other, and it’s not who you think.
And there is and should be no rule that all discussions of important topics need to be academically rigorous as defined by you.
I'm sympathetic to Neil on this one but he's just signalling to his tribe and won't have an impact on anybody else.
Also, this usage of the word danger puts a bad taste in my mouth. I really struggle to agree that a podcaster is dangerous, even to the public good, just by his exercise of free speech.
I've talked with a lot of people who enjoy JRE and other skeptical podcasts, not one of them thinks of themselves as more-intellectual or superior to others who don't.
>Young sings, "I want a cup of coffee but I don't want a GMO" https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/neilyoung/arockstarbucksacof...
1. Yes, I’m aware of the value of GMOs for improving crop yield. That’s important, likely necessary to mitigate the impact of climate change, but it’s not a direct cause of death like a virus and most of the food insecurity in the world traces back to politics rather than an absolute shortage.
refusing to vaccinate or wear masks, means that if you get sick, you will make others sick
In contrast, the link between GMOs and food insecurity is nowhere near that simple. If you are starving because you are a member of an ethnic group which is not in power, GMOs won't do a thing. If you are starving because you don't own your farmland and the owner charges too much in rent, GMOs won't change that dynamic. If you are starving because you lack adequate water or have contaminated farmland, GMOs may or may not help enough to make a difference. If you are starving because insects or fungus destroy your crops, GMOs might help if you can afford the seeds but not if, say, they help by letting the crops survive if you spread pesticides which you can't afford. If you are starving because your lack of access to birth control means that you (as was common throughout human history) have more children than your farmland can feed, GMOs probably won't help enough to change your life. If you are starving because other economic conditions force you to sell too much of your crop to pay for other things like shelter, clothing, medicine, etc. GMOs won't really help, either. If you have any of these problems and the company which made the GMOs won't sell you seeds at an affordable price, well, guess what?
That's not saying that GMOs don't have a useful place — as you might note, I described them as necessary for the impacts of climate change on agriculture — but unlike COVID there isn't a single problem and it's not something which can be fixed with a cheap, infrequent action. The problems GMOs help with are only part of a complex set of overlapping problems and they don't solve anything as much as they help manage it — American farmers jumped on Roundup-resistant crops for obvious reasons but it wasn't a game changer for them because the benefits are partially canceled by the ongoing cost of buying seed and pesticides.
https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor...
Yearly deaths due to hunger : 9 million
https://www.theworldcounts.com/challenges/people-and-poverty...
More people may die from hunger than Covid :https://www.forbes.com/sites/shaynaharris/2020/07/09/more-pe...
Yearly hunger deaths are nearly double Covid deaths.
One of the major issues with hunger is that you can not just ship food from a place that has it to a place that doesn't, that ends up wiping out local farmers and creating more food instability.
GMO are the best way to create crops that are drought and insect resistant. This is huge in bot resisting the effects of global warming and also reducing the amount of pesticides we use.
The idea that we can have food that is better for us and the environment and yet there are people that do their best to prevent it's use is insane.
And your final line about him being dangerous because he inspires people to have opinions about things they are not qualified to assess... Utter garbage. First of all, you don't know anything about his audience, their qualifications and their opinions and conclusions. Second, this line of thinking would extend to all media. Here, let me give you a contemporary example:
- Masks aren't necessary, just wash your hands
- Wear masks
- Closing schools is good
- Closing schools is bad
- The vaccine stops the spread - Don't need masks if you're vaxxed
- The vaccine was never meant to stop the spread, sorry you interpreted it that way - Fauci's own words (how many people died because we were told that the vaxxed don't have to worry about infecting anyone any more?)
- Wear masks even though you're vaxxed
- Get the Vax to save others even though it doesn't stop the spread
The mainstream media has been a pile of hot garbage and endless contradictions during the pandemic. You're expected to just take everything they say at face value and "trust the science". That right there is what's truly dangerous.
The media and government should be honest and explain that "the science" is far from conclusive, rapidly evolving, and that there are many unknowns. Instead, they of course assume that everyone is a moron and must be told what to do.
The idea that Rogan is dangerous because some morons may do whatever a guest tells them to do is full of hypocrisy. That, and neither Rogan nor his guests actually tell anyone what to do. But they may inspire people to ask questions and dig deeper. And the fact that this is so frowned upon in this day in age, is the tragedy of our time.
Masks aren't effective You wont need more than 2 vaccinations There are 0 side effects You cannot get covid if you are vaccinated You cannot get hospitalized from covid if you are vaccinated You cannot die from covid if you are vaccinated There will never be vaccine mandate Covid natural immunity is worse than the vaccine
All these things were false when they said them and are still false today. Furthermore at the time they were said the actual data said the opposite.
Seems to me they way more dangerous than Rogan as they are supposed to be sources of trust to the American people but instead are just making up stuff to fit their political narrative. IMO if these so called sources of trust didn't straight up lie to the public for 2 years, Rogan would not be able to sway so many people.
Refusing to have Jordan Peterson, a psychologist, on your show to say pseudo-intellectual nonsense like "climate doesn't exist" is not censorship, it's just basic editorial sense. Rogan somehow fools people into thinking this lack of sense is a virtue.
Rogan isn’t that mainstream but he’s influential enough that you can tell what he’s covered recently by all of the people talking about it. Whatever he used to be, he’s mainstream now.
Not at first he didn't.
>He’s horoscopes and crystals for people who think they’re intellectuals.
In all honesty, I think you're proving the point that online hatred needs to be curbed before it becomes overwhelmingly destructive to society. Who are these people who so obviously wrongly think of themselves as intellectuals, in your mind, when they really are nothing of the sort? ALL of Joe Rogans listeners, or just the ones opposed to government-enforced medical procedures?
> The true con in all of this is ..
.. is that its possible to espouse hatred (calling Joe Rogan a con, people 'think they are intellectuals', etc.) for an out-group and not be called to task over the reasoning behind that hatred.
Do you hate Joe Rogan because he's mainstream, or because he espouses a view that is not mainstream while appearing to be a mainstream media personality? How is it possible to hold both positions?
Personally, I am not pro-Joe Rogan, I enjoy his podcasts but don't agree with his personality and find his views on some things utterly intolerable, but I am anti-hate speech, which we have seen has allowed the commitment and further justification of so many actual crimes in Americas' socio-political environment recently. Surely there comes a time in every American's mind where they need to balance the strength of their states freedom-granting instruments (the Bill of Rights) with their desire to tone-police the cultures they don't like into oblivion... isn't this how the Iraq/Afghanistan/Libya/Syria/Yemen mess got started in the first place - Americans deciding they don't like the voices of some out-group?
It's that he is mainstream and provably wrong most of the times he opens his mouth, and barely any opposition is ever allowed onto the podcast. It is an actual example of an "ideological echo chamber", unlike most of the times a conservative proclaims it.
Essentially, you are saying you despise Joe Rogan because he's mainstream, pretending not to be, and mis-informing, while also pretending not to .. so does this begin a new era in the American socio-political landscape where news is no longer going to be used to propagandize an entire country, and 'mainstream media' is going to be held to much, much higher levels of truthful standards than ever before?
Because its going to be great to see the disinformation inherent in the modern American media landscape be replaced with actual truth-telling. Like, a lot of us who don't live in that bubble are going to be very relieved to see the truth being told, for a change, about such things as Ukraine, Yemen, and so on ..
Or do we only care about Joe Rogan because he impacts the lives of fellow American citizens?
>he is mainstream and provably wrong most of the times he opens his mouth
I mean, this is your stated opinion.
But he's not mainstream or we'd be seeing his show on the televisions in the airport - instead he's only available on special platforms that have to be sought out .. and your opinion that he is wrong most of the time is also specious.
But lets assume that both of these points of view are 'true': now that it is okay to start cancelling 'mainstream shows' because of the disinformation they spread, do you support the winding down of CNN, MSNBC, The Washington Post, and the New York Times - who have each been found guilty of spreading disinformation multiple times in their history?
The issue is, at what point is 'your side' more informative than 'the other side'? When it becomes mainstream? When it has the approval of known, entrenched establishment entities who stand to profit a great deal from their disinformation campaigns (as is the case with CNN/MSNBC/etc.)?
Mostly, I just want to understand why cancelling mainstream shows should stop at Joe Rogan, in your mind.
I'd LOVE to see CNN and Rachel Maddow - and Tucker Carlson, too - get cancelled in my lifetime over their quite clearly profit-motivated propaganda activities .. so if that is the inevitable end result of the "Cancel Joe Rogan Movement", then - sorry Joe - I'm in.
Because your definition of mainstream is incredibly narrow. In the age of the Internet, mostly boomers and some gen X are watching TV. I don’t watch what’s on any tv anywhere. I haven’t used TV in the traditional sense in over a decade and that’s very common in my demographic. To me - those “news” networks spread as much disinformation as Joe Rogan does. (Which is to say - a lot and practically all the time)
That's the point. He's not a rando anymore but he absolutely was (at least as a talkshow host). Joe was indeed "some guy with a mic and a laptop recording the show" as you describe (here, check the first episode https://www.facebook.com/JoeRoganClips/videos/the-very-first..., sorry for FB link, but I can't find it anywhere anymore).
> he’s getting paid millions of dollars by a corporation to speak exclusively on their platform
He may be getting paid a lot for his show by Spotify, but he's no corporate media. From what I see he's still as genuine as he was before the exclusive deal. Joe has a family and he made it big, which pissed off the "we tell the population what to believe" crowd.
> He’s horoscopes and crystals for people who think they’re intellectuals.
What this tells me is that you haven't listened to that show at all. You couldn't be more wrong on this, it's pretty much as far away from that type of BS as it can get. Mainstream media is at this point the horoscope/crystal people.
That makes him a rando for the majority of people just like me, those who are not interested in or follow MMA.
The point I was making is not whether he’s really a rando or not, TV journalists sure think he is, because according to them he shouldn’t get a seat on the table.
I'd probably agree with that, depending on the reason for gathering around the table.
If the topic is professional fighting or podcasting, he belongs there. If the topic is immigration policy or foreign affairs, he probably shouldn't be invited.
Is there anybody who deserves a seat at every table or, conversely, at no tables?
"TV journalists" criticize him for spreading misinformation.
It is really very hard to think of a more exact description of "corporate media" than a media that gets funded by the payment of hundreds of millions of dollars by a corporation for the rights.
He is literally corporate media.
It becomes really obvious when the podcaster is a professional analyst for that subject and doing the podcast as a side gig. They'd have the same type of person saying the same thing as a guest but they're being a whiny jerks because said person isn't on their platform answering their cherry picked questions.
Same thing is happening in print journalism with substack.
Also, for the Dutch speaking, Nerdland Maandoverzicht [Nerd land month overview]. Brilliant, in depth with scientists who know their stuff and a lot of humor as well. [1]
Joe Rogan has been on national television since the '90s. He paid his dues too. That fact is a wrench in the works of your argument, as it applies to this specific dispute.
https://www.google.com/url?q=https://arstechnica.com/gaming/...
https://www.planetarygroup.com/do-artists-get-paid-every-tim...
https://mobile.twitter.com/jclarachan/status/148646182068449...
This was hilarious, thanks for the laugh! :)
If his principles are that he won't be streamed on the same app as somebody he disagrees with, that's seriously pathetic. He's literally the polar opposite of the coexist bumper sticker.
No - he did it because he has FY money and FY reputation.
And if doesn't want to be associated with a platform he doesn't like -- he's not going to be associated with it.
He's literally the polar opposite of the coexist bumper sticker.
In the sense of not wanting to "coexist" with the vapid corporate opportunism as exemplified by Spotify, you're completely right.
How many years was he on Spotify?
Why is he selling music in the first place then, why not make it free for anyone who wants to listen to it?
Well now he totally is going to be "that guy that tried to get jr off Spotify".
I feel like he just wanted an excuse to leave, to be very honest, so he could promote competitors that encourage high-quality streaming.
Someone should tell JR(E) that, being the largest podcast on the planet.
It's kind of annoying to me that Spotify went all in with podcasts (in the name of "growth"?), and promotes them so heavily. That's really different from music. Do people really decide to subscribe to Spotify because of podcasts? Would they change providers if Joe Rogan was on another service? I doubt it.
Dana Carvey does a great bit about 'Every Neil Young song you've ever heard'
As for influence, why do people care what a daily pot smoking artist, who was reportedly expelled from college, thinks about politics anyway?
Why do people care what any artist thinks about politics?
Yet people give outsize weight to a pothead college dropout artist for some reason.
What is your point here?
Yet he's trying to bully Spotify and Joe Rogan?
This is 100% political.
I don't agree with his ultimatum to Spotify, but fair enough if he feels that way.
This is also quite a funny video, with Jimmy Fallon covering Neil Young, with Neil Young.
Sure, if every Neil Young song you’ve ever heard are his two most popular ones.
Spotify clearly cares about music - hence the entire history of the company & product.
When one creator on a platform threatens an ultimatum to remove themselves or another creator, that is a rude and aggressive unprovoked attack.
Even if Young had 10x the financial value to Spotify as JRE, I believe they still would've made the same decision: "Do not negotiate with terrorists."
The decisionmaker for who gets to be on Spotify is Spotify. Not Neil Young, not Joe Rogan, not Drake, not Ed Sheeran, not anybody.
There is nothing wrong with what Rogan has been criticized by Young for; other than many people including Young being ideologically possessed in the opposite direction.
Disagreement is not grounds for censorship.
In any case, it was Young who issued an ultimatum. His music or Joe's podcast, off the platform. There is no room for a compromise there - this is a rude and violent threat.
I agree with you that it's not terrorism, however.
The principle of "don't negotiate with terrorists" is applicable far beyond literal terrorism and I think it's exactly the moral calculus necessary for Spotify to reach the conclusion they did. Network members who think they can yield violent ultimatums to control the administrating entity are toxic to all of their peers.
Facts are not stories you can agree or disagree on.
You likely think the same of me.
If you could magically be granted "objective" factual understanding, your point would be right, and I would agree with you. But you haven't been, in reality you do not know the facts for certain, neither do any of the 270 doctors/etc who wrote that letter trying to censor Joe, neither does Joe, neither does Robert Malone or any other heterodox intellectual on the topic, and neither does Fauci or any other orthodox intellectual on the topic.
Besides mathematics/logical fundamentals, nobody knows facts for sure. Outside of physics we aren't even quite sure. To pretend that you know the facts, and that you know Joe and his guests are wrong, and that their falsehoods are dangerous --- this is altogether delusional, quite frankly. You may very well be right, but you do not know that you are, you cannot know that you are. The subject matter is too complicated.
My apologies for the harsh words. This is how it is.
---
Edit: and no, I am not being flippant. I am being objective.
You have no idea what you're talking about, which is what's so fucked up about this whole situation. This is all a dystopian cliche. Opinions are not misinformation, and looking at opposing evidence and arguments is not misinformation. It never was, and never will be. The only people who ever claimed such things are historically disgraced totalitarians.
Misinformation comes from states and organizations with ulterior motives who twist and hide the truth for their own gain. It's about power.
Crying out about how "dangerous" it is to have a real discussion that you don't like is ridiculously absurd. Are you saying adults are too stupid to think for themselves, or should not be allowed to take calculated risks? Do you have some kind of proof that having discussions is bad for individuals and/or communities in some way?
There are six in here: https://www.insider.com/joe-rogan-podcast-episodes-that-spre...
Further support of the first in that list: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/rogan-dont-need-to-worry-v...
Further support of the fifth: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/aug/31/joe-rogan/...
A separate 7th item: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/jul/26/joe-rogan/...
prohobo, you may wish to read the links for concrete answers to your request. The how is answered very directly, especially considering the bottom three links are all fact-checking sites that explain the how and the why.
But if you don't care to, we can move on.
What they do is make arguments against their points, many of which aren't verifiable or are just opinions.
I'm all for removing things that are empirically and logically "dangerous misinformation", but we have to actually prove it empirically and logically first. Can you do that?
I think the officials are so afraid that any discussion of nuance [1] would frighten people away from the vaccines that they simply avoid talking about it entirely, and sometimes call to outright suppress any such discussions as "misinformation" and label these people as "anti-vaxx".
[1] https://vinayprasadmdmph.substack.com/p/uk-now-reports-myoca...
2) Prove it's dangerous: either for individuals or communities.
Proving something incorrect is proving proving the negative. That’s not how people engage in good faith argumentation.
I’ll add, a traditional definition of “incorrect information” would primarily focus on factual accuracy over motivation.
Why is it necessary to prove intentionality to prove incorrectness?
All of this is before we acknowledge that you will never accept something as proven false, as proven intentional, or as proven harmful.
Your standard is meaningless because it’s both incoherent and unmeetable.
It’s also characteristic of arguments like this and why the ‘bullshit asymmetry’ concept exists. Trying to meet it is a distraction that simply serves to give your argument credibility because people engage with it in trying (hopelessly) to meet your asymmetric epistemically standards.
Explain what the danger is, and how it is manifesting.
And intentionality is absolutely relevant to this, considering we are essentially judging a conversation between two people. Does the same conversation in a bar constitute misinformation? When does it go from conversation to declaration? When does opinion become misinformation?
I'm not currently interested in whether what they're saying is true or not, I'm interested in whether it can be considered misinformation in spirit of the meaning of the word. If their intention is to discuss something sincerely, then it's not misinformation - it's opinion.
Good ideas do not require the censorship of bad ideas.
You decide whether you want to continue paying your premium plan. Spotify will acquire the content it believes is best for all users. You do not control their decisions just because you pay the subscription.
Can anyone recommend a good alternative? Preferably with a decent selection of obscure metal. I'd like to try some other paid sevices before reverting to piracy.
I just know that MOG’s selling point for a long while was it’s huge metal library and license set; I see no reason for that to have been lost through its MOG->Beats->Apple Music transition.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/neil-youngs-long-record-of-spr...
Maybe people should just be allowed to have these conversations because the paranoid serve a useful purpose.
It's fine that they've decided to pivot to being a podcast company with a sideline in music - apparently that's where the money is, and it's a free market. But if they're going to take a political position by signing exclusive contracts with and heavily promoting podcast hosts, they've lost all claim to be a neutral party, and can't expect artists - and customers - to remain with them.
Tangent, but this is actually obnoxious. I never seem to get the “new releases for you” on my home screen anymore, but every-time I open the app I see I slew of podcasts I don’t give a damn about despite me slipping through maybe one podcast episode in my entire account history.
Spotify clearly cares about the money they can make managing music rights.
If they cared about *music* their playlists would be curated by humans. If they cared about music they'd be working to increase musician payout across the board, rather than push it down as low as possible like any other business expense. If they cared about music, they'd be creating opportunities to make, share and enjoy music: instead what they focus on is engagement, sponsorship and rights management.
That is definitely not clear any more.
As someone who doesn't listen to podcasts via Spotify, the UI is literally unusable for music nowadays.
Your post ignores the recent and not-recent history of the company:
- CEO equates musicians "doing well" with musicians creating a lot content quickly ..: https://ultimateclassicrock.com/spotify-ceo-rockers-respond/ - undermines music as an artform for the sake of high profit - blocking a prominent musician in favor of a talk-show comedian / host. Talk Radio trumping Music. - purportedly poor-quality recommendation engine - purportedly large amount of ads per unit of content
Spotify simply hasn't given in to blackmail. If Joe Rogan said he'd leave Spotify if they don't kick Neil Young out and then Neil Young was kicked out they would've chosen a podcast over Neil Young.
I think on both issues Spotify wins. Financially they probably do, and they get to show they don't bow to hysterical artists. That's a good thing in the long run.
Ultimately it's not a question of revenue but whether Spotify has to follow the footsteps of Meta/Facebook and YouTube to moderate content on their platform. This was largely a non-issue before they started their exclusive deals with the likes of Rogan - the onus was on music labels and publishers.
But now Spotify's position as a content platform has been thrust into the spotlight and will likely have to invest in content curation (e.g. algorithms, human raters). Furthermore if other artists follow in Young's footsteps, then this could get quite messy.
Freedom of speech includes the freedom of wrong speech. In fact, it's wrong speech that most needs protection.
This doesn't make the example invalid, mind you. But I consider it a warning to be extremely careful and skeptical when equating 'dangerous' speech to immediate physical damage.
Free speech means that the gov can not put you in jail because of that but private people can punish you for spreading fake news. This is there freedom.
Yes you can cry then that this is cancel culture but every time someone cries about cancel culture usually its because the person said something stupid which people did not like and now want's to take away there freedom of speech.
But 'cancel culture' wouldn't be an issue if that was all - if individual people simply chose to stop associating with the wrong-thinker. Not even if a lot of people did at once.
The problem is that when those people are not individual fellow citizens, but the "Trust & Safety Team" or the "Anti-Evil Team" at $Megacorporation, they don't just stop doing business with you - they can effectively cut you off from most of the rest of the world, whether or not the rest of the world wants it.
Simply put, the problem is that they have too much power. They have the same freedom of association as private citizens, but their ability to punish people is incomparably greater and isn't subject to the same restraint as the government's.
If Facebook/Google/Amazon/Cloudflare deny your their services you can still always find a new provider (see Gab). If the government shuts you down, you need to emigrate to start back up.
Sure, its a PIA to re-setup a service meant for AWS not on AWS but that's really the core of AWS's offering. Big Tech is not the grocery store, you will live without twitter, you will not live without food.
The power a corperation has is governed by the Charter that was (now implicitly) granted by the State they're incorperated in. If you think they have too much power in their Charter complain to that state.
Quite. I loudly support breaking up the megacorps and try to avoid depending on them, for what little I can do as a European citizen.
if the intention is to spread lies - then I would say no. Otherwise very much yes, because who would be the authority to determine the facts from the fake?
We abolished the power of the inquisition some centuries before, because of bad experience with the concept of holy truth or canon.
Science is an open process, where it is clear that some positions held today, will be abolished in the future, with new data.
Or is the concept to let only certified scientists speak up? Well, that opens up the question, who gets to decide who is one.
I think it is very dangerous to influence that process, with state authority declaring what is right and what is wrong.
And in this specific case it seems to be about an "official" scientist Dr. Malone(who was invited) who might have gone off the rails quite some time ago. But it is still important for people do decide on who to trust, than installing a government institution to do so. Because I do not know molecular biology - but I like to know, that one of the people involved with the invention of mRNA vaccines strongly advises against it. And I can read about it all and then decide for me it is likely mostly tinfoil hat area. But if the government would activly suppress and censor his opinion - I might think, there is actually more behind.
Honest and open discussion is not disinformation, by definition.
Rogan et Al. Know they spew nonsense, they don't believe their shit, it's just for the lolz. They are chaos agents enjoying seeing the world crumble while making money of it.
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/30/world/coronavirus-who-mas...
> "There is no specific evidence to suggest that the wearing of masks by the mass population has any potential benefit. In fact, there's some evidence to suggest the opposite in the misuse of wearing a mask properly or fitting it properly,"
If we banned all the maskers then, and all the antimaskers a few months later, who'd be left?
Music is about rebellion, often. Young's music was, at the time it was made.
Joe Rogan is also about rebellion. Young just doesn't like his flavor of it, so he's throwing a temper tantrum. Sad, really.
Spotify is not a passive party in this, they are actively promoting and contributing money to the generation and promotion of extremely dubious content on their platform.
I wouldn't mind so much if they were just carrying that particular podcast amongst a sea of others, I do question Spotify's ethics as a company that's made a conscious choice to finance misinformation.
Probably nothing more than a difference of opinion, but I'm not keen on supporting a company that cannot be considered neutral any more.
This is business.
Wouldn't it be interesting if someone compared the current cuts with past cuts to see what they wanted/needed to remove.
Audio equivalent of selling donut holes.
I mean they would say that, ofc, but seems like really that was the case?
That does make me want to switch platforms.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/spotify-strikes-exclusive-podca...
I was never, ever okay with a big company knowing and controlling how, when, and how long I listen to my music. I dabbled, but I found it far more creepy, somehow, than even letting Google host my email (which is far more intimate, after all). So to you I say: come on back, the water is fine.
Turns out that it's not.
... he's always been extremely vocal politically and socially, this is really no different. But yeah, sure, let's call him senile/narcissistic.
He's making a statement that Joe Rogan is polluting our minds. Spotify is promoting and paying Rogan, with an exclusive contract. Will this change anything? We'll see, probably not. But I'm sure Neil Young doesn't care if his music isn't on Spotify, as long as they're funding Rogan's BS.
I'm reminded of a line from The Prophet:
“Think you the spirit is a still pool which you can trouble with a staff?”
No one's mind is polluted any other way than one's own carelessness. Somehow you've managed to discern that Rogan's information is polluting and manage to survive with a mind that is still capable of good reason - I'm sure you think so. Why do you not credit others with this ability?
But we're all susceptible to suggestion and sensationalism, and some to a greater degree. The fact that this company is paying him millions, and probably making more, creates a perverse incentive to sustain and promote him and his nonsense.
Then we can move on to the fallacy of the infallibility of judgement (which ties in nicely with the quote you provided) that J.S. Mill points out in his arguments against censorship.
If it’s innate that would be interesting but it would be even better for us all if you would share your methods and then we could all benefit.
I would counter that possibly the greatest of all philosophers, Socrates, used this very technique (that now bears his name) to uncover the flaws in someone’s thinking.
So, the question stands.
(As a hedge, most times when I see something principled like this happen, there is some small blowback and instead of letting it pass, the organization capitulates and reverses their decision. We'll see if that happens here)
[1] https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/neil-young-dem...
[1] https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/neil-young-dem...
I don't love my options.
Because you’re acting like these two “either or” options are being forced on you. The options are 1) misleading and 2) not your only options.
Option #1 - Switching streaming platforms - There are already artists far more popular than Young not on Spotify (https://www.ranker.com/list/musicians-against-spotify/ranker...), like Prince, the Beatles, Taylor Swift, Pink Floyd, etc. If you’ve ever wanted to listen to these all-time artists, you already had to switch platforms, so this is not a new option.
Option #2 - Censorship - Find me a quote where Young says he wants to curate Rogan’s content. You’re leading here. And censorship is way too strong a word. It’s not censorship if the content is (or can be) easily accessible elsewhere. Censorship is the total banning of a piece of content everywhere.
Totally fine to be upset by what Young did, I get that it’s a crappy move, but it doesn’t rise to the level of censorship or inconveniencing you, beyond the tiniest amount.
We mostly think a free market means freedom for consumers, but it’s also freedom for suppliers.
Stating your preferences online is just practicing free speech.
It states the preferences you can afford.
I realize I'm pulling a quote out of context from your comment, itself a specific reply to another comment. That being said:
This doesn't seem to address what I understand to be the issue. I would draw a distinction between political statements based on differences of opinion/perspective and statements that target misinformation. If one believes that the latter is at play, this distinction is relevant, and the idea is somewhat codified (with some variations) in the free speech, hate speech, and libel laws of many jurisdictions for reasons that seem justifiable to me.
More specifically, I would have a problem with Spotify engaging in specific political disputes between artists on their platform. I wouldn't have a problem with Spotify adapting their terms to target misinformation on their platform, assuming this was done in good faith and enforced reasonably.
I agree with him here, mostly. I wish a bunch of other artists would do the same. Censorship is a complex issue, but there is a lot of mass delusion going on recently and a lot of lives lost because of it.
I haven't really listened to Rogan except clips of what he's said on this issue. But I liked him a lot on Newsradio.
It's not like it is going to hurt Neil, he doesn't need the money. I can't see a huge amount of people streaming his music anymore.
That said, if Neil wants to be "pro-science," he should have never pushed his high res music stuff which sure doesn't stand up to double blind testing.
Not necessarily, e.g., AAC is pretty bad: https://forum.shotcut.org/t/crackling-distorted-audio-in-exp...
Apart from that, you're being severely shortsighted if you think playback is the only thing to do with an audio track.
Do you mean the royal you, or me specifically?
I think mastering is far more important. And I agree other audio formats aren't all great.
But uncompressed CD quality audio is perfectly fine, in terms of resolution, humans can't detect beyond that. Neil's Pono stuff was a waste.... it was MASSIVE datawise for no good reason.
In the time domain, you're absolutely right, Nyquist–Shannon proves that we don't benefit from sampling higher than twice the upper bound of human hearing. Rates like 96kHz or 192kHz are useless for quality (although in specific live situations, they have utility in that the latency would be half or quarter that of typical rates, for a given buffer size in samples).
In the amplitude domain, CD quality (16 bits/sample) is pretty damn great for typical mastered audio (~96dB undithered, ~120dB dithered) but if the audio is unusually dynamic (i.e., loudness is not maximized) like with a symphony orchestra, you might actually turn up your sound system to the point where quantization noise becomes evident in the quietest parts, at which point you absolutely would benefit from more bits per sample (say, 24, yielding ~144dB of range undithered).
So in practice, you're right, CDs are fine; but "humans can't detect beyond that" only truly applies in the frequency domain. We can detect latency (not applicable to playback of recordings) and we can detect quantization noise when cranking up the volume knob.
More significantly, though, the Pono format took about 30 times the amount of data as lossless CD quality. While you are talking more like 1.5 times.
> You mean between two sources, for positioning? I'm not sure the relevance of that here.
It's only really meaningful in scenarios like a recording studio where the performer is listening to themselves live, in headphones, if the signal undergoing A/D and D/A conversion with some processing in between. It could mean 2ms instead of 8ms, which can be the difference between distracting and not. Not relevant here (I admitted "not applicable") but just an example of where some utility does exist, but the utility is definitely not audible frequency response.
Would reducing the buffer size be another way to solve this?
I haven't seen NY saying the spotify CEO won't see their kid again unless Rogan disappears from the platform - that would be blackmail.
In a world where everyone defends consolidation into monopolistic platforms and you need to choose which tech platform will own your life this becomes a problematic political issue. At least it's convenient right?
A link from MSNBC :
https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/neil-young-gmo-monsanto-msna6499...
The burden of proof lies on the side deploying self-replicating novel agents into the environment.
Sure seems to be simple: "speech I like is good, speech I don't like is bad".
If you understand why such legal concepts as fraud and defamation exist, you would understand that there is indeed nuance to the concept of freedom of speech.
Must not've been that great of a selling point
Excuse me if this latest drama of his makes me roll my eyes.
http://tenfourfox.blogspot.com/2015/01/and-now-for-something...
The reason why it looks like a Toblerone bar is because they decided to use through-hole electrolytic capacitors (because audiophile reasons) and the battery was round too (an 18650 IIRC): http://mikebeauchamp.com/wp-content/gallery/pono-teardown/ca...
The triangular shape and inability to carry it comfortably in jeans pants pockets doomed it from day one. I'm amazed something like this passed the design stage. And first encounter with user testing would have made it crystal clear that the shape was a no-go. Yet it not only got funded but was also mass-produced. It was a massive waste of money.
I have no love for Rogan. But I don’t necessarily think Spotify should remove Rogan. But if Neil doesn’t like the way Spotify operates, removing his music is putting his money where his mouth is in terms of protest, and I respect that.
When that didn't work, he moaned about Spotify's poor audio quality on his way out the door, adding something about young people believing everything they hear. I can't see anything respectable in that coarse of action.
24yo's don't need informational protection by the actions of crusty old rockers.
Neil Young: "...these young people, people who believe what they are hearing because it is on SPOTIFY.... they think everything they hear on SPOTIFY is true."
Ridiculous and condescending. He thinks young people are mindless zombies, dazzled by big tech platform brands, unable to think for themselves.
Neil Young: "unfortunately SPOTIFY continues to peddle the lowest quality in music reproduction. So much for art. Soon my music will live on in a better place."
He sounds like a grumpy old man, throwing around ultimatums, then burning bridges on his way out when the plan didn't work.
[1] https://neilyoungarchives.com/news/1/article?id=Spotify-In-T...
But yeah, it's the only sane decision not to let one content creator strong arm you into booting other content creators he doesn't like.
I don't care if you're right or wrong (because he is right, Rogan is misinformation these days), but you don't get to control who gets to say what.
Of course you do! If you have more leverage and power than the person you’re trying to silence, then you get to silence them.
See: Nearly every cop who killed an innocent person up until about the last 5 years.
Yeah. And it turned out Young didn't have more leverage in this case.
$0.004 per play
https://www.makeuseof.com/how-much-spotify-pay-per-stream/
~6M monthly listeners
https://www.newsweek.com/spotify-unlikely-drop-joe-rogan-ove...
$24k/month
~$300k/year
Not sure how much goes directly to Neil and how much of a cut the record label gets.
Neil Young’s net worth is ~$200M
https://www.celebritynetworth.com/richest-celebrities/rock-s...
So, he’s losing about 0.15% of his net worth as a result.
Or, if he had a $100k/year salary, about $150 before taxes, maybe around $75 after taxes.
> Several things come into play for Spotify artist payouts like the listener's subscription tier and country of origin, the number of streams a song has, advertising revenue per market, and distribution contracts.
> In a tweet, classical violinist Tasmin Little with 755,000 monthly subscribers has disclosed earning £12.34 ($17) for five to six million streams.
The only way we'll know is if they release the information, and my guess is that neither party will do so publicly. I would guess $2k/mo. but I could be wrong. This is still pretty good considering there are multiple streaming platforms.
Just checking out Neil Young on YouTube Music he has only approx 440k subscribers, vs someone like Jason Mraz with 3.4M. I am guessing that the numbers on Spotify are likely skewed by a bit as well.
It’s naive to think that if a person with enough power wants to censor me, they won’t be able to accomplish it. Accept it as the way of the world.
Joe rogan claiming that Texas won’t give vaccines to obese elderly white people because he knows one person that was denied. Denies official source. https://youtu.be/tR0bO1KKl60
Joe Rogan saying young healthy adults don’t need the vaccine because his two children didn’t have bad symptoms https://mobile.twitter.com/AlexPattyy/status/138707714515606...
Some of the recent data on the risk factors for myocarditis in young people (particularly males) is, however, at the very least, interesting. I’m not a doctor, biologist or immunologist though, so I don’t have any reason to suggest anything regarding vaccine use in young adults either way.
People having open discussions with people I don't like and disagree with is "giving a platform" and must be punished.
You can refer to almost any political talk radio, any hosted segments on cable TV news networks and any opinion piece in the newspaper for starters. Almost no fact checking and incredibly biased, or downright misinformation.
Think about what you’re saying: No open discussion can possibly contain misinformation. That’s certainly not true by any stretch of the imagination. That fact that a statement is made in public doesn’t make it true.
That is not what I'm saying. I am opposed to the boiling down of a non-establishment discussion podcast to the singular word "misinformation. Just as I'm sure the commenter I replied to would object if I referred to any news source he cited - NYT, WaPo, WSJ, CDC, FDA, etc. - and defined it simply as "misinformation".
The word in and of itself is misinformation, typically meant to steer people away from reading, hearing, and seeing information they don't like. And it shouldn't be tolerated. We as a society need to start fostering open discussion of topics and viewpoints that the establishment and its followers doesn't like or approve of.
Right, but they are calling some of the specific content misinformation. The fact that it’s an open discussion on a non-establishment podcast is irrelevant to the content being verifiable or reliable or rational.
And no, we don’t need more open discussions about every single viewpoint, regardless of feasibility. Just being anti-establishment doesn’t mean you have something worth saying or sharing. You need to have a little more substance than just doubting the establishment for the sake of doubting the establishment.
If you doubt the vaccine efficacy because you’re a virologist and have a theory that can be tested or a question about the research or development process that the establishment can’t answer adequately, great, let’s get that view out there. If you doubt the vaccine efficacy because doing so gets you attention from Rogan’s ~11M listeners per episode, or because you just want to challenge the establishment then sorry, you’re not adding value to the national conversation.
One difference is that in the case of Young and most other content creators on Spotify, their content is available all over the place. Spotify pays them royalties based on how many people listen to it on Spotify.
If Young were saying that he didn't want his music on Spotify unless they dropped, say, Nickleback that would just be ridiculous because Spotify isn't doing anything special with Nickleback. They didn't specifically chose to have Nickleback, and if Nickleback gets any money from Spotify it is proportional to how many people choose to listen that way.
With Rogan, Spotify has paid him in advance to make his content exclusively for Spotify. There's a much closer relationship between Rogan and Spotify than between Nickelback and Spotify.
they aren't though, and Neil isn't saying they should because he says so, but out of a sense of moral decency, and he simply doesn't want to be associated with them if they're going to be gibing a platform for dangerous nonsense.
It's actually up to Joe to take responsibility for his role as a public service broadcaster (whether he likes it or not) and ensure he moderates his message. He's too big to be an "outsider" "upstart" or "underdog" or whatever it is people think it is that justifies contrarian hot takes.
It's time to step back and realise that he's in a "Free Speech Antitrust" kind of category.
What a backwards way of characterising a style of vocal delivery. As I was reading your comment I was listening to the group 'clipping.' deliver the story of an uprising on an interstellar slave ship, the loneliness of the lone survivor drifting in and out of hypersleep for millenia, and the ship's computer realising the hate it had been taught for people with a skin color had no bearing in reality.
The GP talked about a specific person taking specific actions that they think was worth taking a stance against. Is your counter-argument to that highly pointed argument really to talk about everyone using a specific vocal technique?
Criticise a specific artist if they step over the line. Criticise someone like Immortal Technique for his 9/11 conspiracy bullshit and his rampant homophobia, but don't use someone like him to claim that somehow _all of rap_ should be discarded.
I imagine Young's manager/label tried their best to talk him down, if this wasn't a stunt for some other purpose.
I imagine there's more listeners like me, and I assume there's no listeners out there that will suddenly start listening to Spotify if they aren't already.
JRE will roll on regardless of what Spotify does. Neil Young will always be Neil Young.
The only people hurting here are the decision makers of Spotify.
Note: I may have been wrong about the reasons for Dave Chapelle leaving. If I'm recalling correctly, that was the reason he originally cited when leaving. But more info came out in later interviews. Seems like he just needed a break from the spotlight.
Sure. But without the remainder of the $100 million that Spotify are paying him. Could he monetise a YouTube channel to that amount over the same time period? Perhaps, but Spotify are currently handling his marketing for him, so I'm sceptical.
I wasn't criticising Rogan, simply pointing out that the situation is different for him and Young - due to their differing ages and the nature of their creative output.
Somewhat pedantic note: this statement seems misleading to me. I think you mean "200M monthly listens", unless you're claiming that 2.5% of the world's population listens to Rogan every month?
JRE does 3-4 shows on a typical week. So:
3.5 / 7 * 30 * 11 = 165m
So the other 35m per month must be groups of people viewing? Not sure how they took measurements or if this is apples to oranges comparison or if the graph is to be trusted [2].
[1] https://i.redd.it/or4mhemo8j981.jpg
[2] https://www.giantfreakinrobot.com/ent/joe-rogan-viewers.html
It only made things worse, the guys moved underground but their communities kept growing and felt validation in martyrdom, and soon enough they found a new, even stronger voice, and they always find ways to circumvent censorship.
It should not be done because it simply does not work in the long run.
Unless you prefer totalitarian regimes of course…
The phrase "work" here is pretty subjective from case to case. The outcome ultimately is determined by who is getting censored by whom and for what. As a general rule it "works" just as often as it doesn't.
We’re targeting messengers…
I don't agree with Joe Rogan, but this is a very wild claim.
Particularly, CNN/MSNBC/NBC/AP all promoted the "masks don't work" lie promoted by the CDC at the start of the pandemic, which likely directly led to deaths.
But if CNN slaughters some grandparents with CDC-backed lies it's water under the bridge compared to Joe Rogan, right?
Cdc goes with the evidence, which changes as science evolves. Some people deliberately misrepresent the evidence.
So, your rebuttal for CNN and friends literally causing death by anti-mask propaganda in 2020 is a harmless drug? You're going to need more evidence.
How about the City of New York encouraging residents to visit Chinatown when the pandemic ramped up? [1] Seems a lot more dangerous than an FDA approved drug.
Dr Fauci also has made repeated dangerous claims, such as the vaccines being "100% effective at preventing hospitalisation" [2] -- this fabricated lie DESTROYED public confidence in officials.
A recent Decision Desk poll showed only 31% of Americans trust Dr Fauci (likely due to repeated lies), and less than 50% trust the CDC (which lied repeatedly about masks and bungled health advice constantly). Most notably, news media enjoys a pathetic 10% trust among the public. [3]
[1] https://www1.nyc.gov/office-of-the-mayor/news/079-20/mayor-d...
[2] https://twitter.com/independent/status/1366125427144732672
[3] https://www.newsnationnow.com/polls/newsnation-poll-voters-t...
I listen to quite a bit of Neil Young and not-so-much Joe Rogan.
Very much considering spotify or any alternative
On the Beach is one of my favorite Young albums and its on AM.
Edit to add that the phone app needs some polish. I've got a few really unusual errors and it's not as slick as the Spotify app. It works but I could easily see less technical users just dropping it because of them. But the web player and desktop apps have been great.
Also, "virtue" in these cases usually just means conforming to social pressure and the norms of particularly vociferous factions of society.
Even if you happen to agree with those norms (which are seen as Draconian by many), the sanctimonious holier-than-thou attitude probably won't help the cause in the long run.
What evidence do you have that this move by Neil Young is anything other than his honest feelings on the subject? A lot of people are sick of Rogan spreading BS. It's not suprising someone like Young would choose to use what little leverage they have to push for him to be removed.
A lot of people sharing the same opinion doesn't magically make that opinion less valid, engaging with the world as if there's some great conspiracy against you is counterproductive.
I kinda made the opposite of the that claim in my comment :-) I think a lot of people see the norms "virtue signallers" want to impose as Draconian. I don't think a guy having controversial guests on his podcasts is something many people find intolerable.
If we want to live in a circus where people who have no idea what they're talking about get to disseminate lies while thousands of people die preventable deaths every day we've lost our collective minds.
Supporting censorship would be more along the lines of asking the government to jail Rogan, erasing his content, etc.
Spotify has actually removed certain JRE episodes from the available catalog as a condition of their deal.[1]
[1]: https://nypost.com/2021/04/09/spotify-quietly-deletes-contro...
It's just "virtue signalling", it's just "PC gone mad", it's just "cancel culture", they're just "crazy SJWs". Notice how none of these things actually have any substance, they're just a way to dismiss someone else and walk away feeling like you've won a pointless argument.
Post something substantial or don't post at all.
It can be used that way, but it isn't just that. You could say the same about the word "racist", "TERF", or "transphobe".
> Notice how none of these things actually have any substance
I notice substance to these claims all the time (as well as non-substantial ones).
People to whom these words accurately apply have a stake as dismissing them though.
There's been this big shift the last 10 or so years that hasn't got enough attention. People somehow now act like the world has to align to focus all its priorities on exactly what they prioritize, and can't imagine the idea that things matter differently to different people.
The way things previously worked, you didn't have to agree with everything someone else did or said, you just had to get along. Now it's like "if you don't drop everything and take my cause as seriously as I do, you're dead to me"
I had previously thought it was a "me generation" thing, but Neil Young is like 80 so i guess it's a societal shift.
this isnt really that different than asking Young to share a show with someone. our systems and our services have gotten more centralized, more controlled. the connection is not as clear & apparent as sharing a stage. but this is not some new radical new interpersonal cruelty Young has fostered. it's the simple desire to not associate with trash & cruelty, to find better spaces. that's not new. it's just good sense.
we dont all have to follow the same code, but we should not be party to those supporting the despicable. obvious, & anything else anything less in madness.
[1] https://www.antiwarsongs.org/do_search.php?idartista=224&ste...
Ironically your attitude itself is not new. During the Civil Rights era it was a common meme among the "center" that emancipation was a worthy and noble cause but that ending segregation and Jim Crow was a bridge too far. Hindsight is 20/20...
That's kind of an odd take. By the time the dust settles there will be more than a million Americans dead from COVID. The lion's share of them will have been unvaccinated.
I don't think it's radical for someone to believe that they have a social duty to help ensure that public discourse around our most potent public health tool is rooted in science.
Moreover I don't think there can be any reasonable disagreement that Joe Rogan is in a position of considerable influence to many millions of Americans, and consequently his commentary about vaccines (and COVID treatments) has been the proximate cause of many deaths, perhaps thousands, and I'm pretty sure that history will take a dim view.
Neil Young's actions here are quixotic, certainly, but considering the personal cost he can hardly be accused of failing to walk the talk.
Most of them died before vaccines were available. So, you aren't wrong but...
> ensure that public discourse around our most potent public health tool is rooted in science.
Fact checking is not aligned with science, which is a continual process of correction. Remember when fact checkers all jumped in about how masks didn't do any good when that was the official CDC and WHO position? We have known since the 1990s with SARS that masks are effective.
Young recognizes who is hurting us & is standing apart.
Youcre trivializing what is happening, trying to make it look unimportant. Saying that this malignance isnt as toxic as past ones so we should just quietly hold our noses.
Personally i disagree with your assessment of scale about whats happening. But as important to me is whether society quietly suffers it's toxic, harmful, animosity-based elements, or whether we have a society that actively thinks/cares/promotes goodness & cooperation. It is outrageous that small-minded anti-societal reactionary-ism has winded us so bad, that anti-activism has such a huge banner, garners such animosity against doing good. Rogan is a head wolf, one of the main profiteers selling hardened uncaring individualism & trading misinformation to boost his popularity.
No side here is free from claims of attention seeking or outrage-generation. But one side pretends it's doing something else, one side gets offended when the other side is activist, & it's not the side that seems to be very interested in dealing in peace & coexistence.
This is the most hilariously sheltered and out of touch comment I have ever read in half a decade of reading HN
They are specifically outlawing teaching racial superiority or inferiority. You can read the Texas bill here: https://capitol.texas.gov/BillLookup/Text.aspx?LegSess=87R&B...
While this is definitely an anti-CRT bill, it does not make "teaching about racism illegal" in any sense.
> half of the country is trying to perform a fascist coup
> Fascism
> often capitalized : a political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition
From https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fascism
> Coup
> 1 : coup d'état a military coup
From https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/coup
Oddly enough, "half of the country" would be approximately a majority. If they are "performing" something, it would basically just be Democracy, though I suspect you're equivocating between a small group of insurrectionists and 175,000,000 people.
> This is the most hilariously sheltered and out of touch comment I have ever read in half a decade of reading HN
Well, you were at least self prescient if mistimed.
This might be the benefit of international distance but it seems to me it is really _unambiguous_ -- based on known facts and no matter which side you come from -- that at the end of 2020 Trump and his DC faction attempted a legislative self-coup:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-coup
It's at least very arguable that there are ongoing, truly widespread, state-level efforts among his supporters to secure politicised control over the administration of future elections.
You do not need to be left-wing, or anti-conservative, to acknowledge the above. You merely have to make an honest appraisal of what we know (not least based on what various Trump-affiliated political actors have openly said).
I will leave it to others to decide whether Trump met the definition of a fascist, but one tech-related episode that strikes me as instructive on the subject is his attempt to force the sale of TikTok to a company of his choosing if they paid what amounted to a kickback levy to the Treasury.
You and I both agree Trump did not have his cabinet members attempt to dissolve Congress or such.
You might have the belief that Trump coaxed citizens into raiding a Congressional building. That would be "formenting insurrection".
> It's at least very arguable that there are ongoing, truly widespread, state-level efforts among his supporters to secure politicised control over the administration of future elections.
No, it's not. At most he has some loud and frothy followers demanding "recounts", which they got and were still disappointed with.
If you actually dislike Trump, do not repeat the mistakes of 2016. Don't paint him up as some master Hitler who is one step away from being dictator for life. Don't bring him up in every topic and let him live rent free. The media did that and he got a better PR campaign then he could have ever bought.
He's just not that smart, nor are most of his followers actually that dedicated. Even "insurrection", while accurate, gives the Jan 6th stunt too much credit.
Yes, but you're misunderstanding/misrepresenting what is going on if you think the Capitol insurrection is the entirely of the story. The insurrection was _clearly_ provoked as a single component of a self-coup. There's abundant evidence of this; it's really not in doubt.
> You and I both agree Trump did not have his cabinet members attempt to dissolve Congress or such.
The "or such" is attempting more work here than it can pull off. For example, he and people close to him (like Giuliani) attempted to illegally establish a corrupt slate of electors to throw the election. And he attempted to literally intimidate his Vice President into not certifying at all.
Yes, he was dissuaded from some actions. but he was so much closer to pulling it off than you seem to suggest.
> No, it's not. At most he has some loud and frothy followers demanding "recounts", which they got and were still disappointed with.
Again, you are suggesting that the activity of citizens is the end of it. It is clearly not. It is a multi-state state-level legislative agenda, heavily co-ordinated.
Here is a quite good summary of what is going on:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/dec/23/voter-suppre...
> He's just not that smart, nor are most of his followers actually that dedicated. Even "insurrection", while accurate, gives the Jan 6th stunt too much credit.
You don't seriously think people should believe he did it all on his own and just discount it? It didn't succeed, yes, and he didn't surround himself with the best people, but it was a co-ordinated campaign by many people around him (see the Willard group for example).
In many ways it is still ongoing. If you are content to imagine that Trump and Trumpism are no longer a threat, you are mistaken. Trump may not get to run in person in 2024 (he's clearly dangling this in part so he can claim that his many legal troubles are political persecution), but Trumpism will not be reversed, and minority rule is not off the table.
From a distance, the USA looks increasingly like it is heading towards a very big political reversal from democracy. The GOP certainly won't ever close the lid on everything coming out of Pandora's Box and go back to being a normal political party, and there's no evidence they want to. (They are paying millions of dollars of Trump's legal fees, right now).
It is not a time to pretend things are OK.
I don't think that teaches children or society in general a healthy way to deal with different opinions including misinformation and form your own opinions.
I also think the reaction shows or gives the appearance of fear, which itself gives undue power to them. Banning words and phrases and people like some nazi or communist police state makes people sit up and wonder why the regime is so terrified of words and in some ways marvel at their power (and don't give me the "private companies" line, we all know the corrupt government-corporate complex all work for one another).
If you want to stand up against Orwellian police state BS look at the county in Tennessee that just banned the graphic novel Mause or the states passing laws banning teaching anything that might make white people feel guilty as a response to the BS moral panic that was whipped up around critical race theory.
You say that like it's opposite what I said.
My position is that I don't think censorship and banning of ideas and people is a healthy way to develop that disdain in society.
> If you want to stand up against Orwellian police state BS look at the county in Tennessee that just banned the graphic novel Mause or the states passing laws banning teaching anything that might make white people feel guilty as a response to the BS moral panic that was whipped up around critical race theory.
There's lots of things to "stand up against". Corporate censorship and other kinds of proxy attacks on anybody who questions certain narratives pushed by the ruling class is a big one even if you sometimes agree with the establishment. They don't have your interests at heart even if they coincidentally appear to align from time to time. One day it is be about vaccines, but another day it will be war with Iraq or intervention in Libya or conflict with China over Taiwan.
[1] - https://edition.cnn.com/2021/02/16/health/1918-flu-lessons-p...
[2] - https://www.history.com/news/1918-pandemic-spanish-flu-censo...
He also went on Dick Cavett and made some insane connection between that random protest and the stereotypes of Native Americans in Hollywood movies and tv shows.
Not only that, he traveled back in time to participate in the civil rights movement to gain enough credibility to convince an actress who'd been at the occupation of Alcatraz to accept his Oscar and give a speech connecting Native American stereotypes and that random protest. We're talking serious Back to the Future level shit here.
Brando's nuts.
So anyway, thanks for that meaningful addition to the comments.
Well, looking at the past two years, I'm not so sure about that. Locking up the whole world in their apartments, fining people for being on the street, locking up playgrounds, banning outside exercise or limiting your "outside" time to 1 hour or allowing you to go no further than 1-3 miles from your home sounds pretty dystopian to me. My mom died of cancer after being ignored for 1 and a half year (in the EU she couldn't get a CT scan for 6 months because the hospital staff didn't want to disinfect the machine after each use) and I was able to see her only in the last 2 weeks of her life after being forced to stay in quarantine for 10 days, even if I had negative PCR tests before travelling, so yeah, let's all pretend we care about people and health, and not about people like you feeling superior and better than everyone else.
Neil Young was saved from Polio as a child by being one of the early recipients of the Salk vaccine. As someone who is living proof of the effectiveness of vaccines, he likely has very little patience for people who profit off of spreading vaccine misinformation and put his own profits on the line to make the statement. Good for him.
Even if there was something wrong about mRNA vaccines would it not have been better to campaign for Covaxin or Sputnik to be allowed by the FDA?
I think you should know that one of the main polio vaccines doesn’t actually prevent you from getting polio, you still get it and can spread it it just doesn’t paralyze you.
And that’s the Salk vaccine, the other vaccine is literally giving people a weakened stain of polio. And it actually causes some paralysis in about 3 in every million so that vaccine isn’t perfect.
Your comment was interesting, though. I did some additional reading about the history of those vaccines.
The fact is the original comment as phrased was totally wrong, and we could debate the clarification.
Instead let’s just acknowledge that if smallpox were around today and we had a world wide epidemic but we had a vaccine that prevented ill effects in nearly all cases but still allowed transmission, then it’s safe to assume there would be vaccine mandate. That would be different dynamics just like polio. Different dynamic need different responses.
Trying to cancel and censor another artist because you disagree with their opinions feels very wrong. But just because I disagree with Neil doesn't mean I want to censor him or take him off Spotify or my playlists... Oh wait. He removed his music from my Spotify playlists.
Why wouldn't Neil just write a song titled "Joe Rogan" and use the Spotify platform to spread his message? I'd respect that.
If I'm not a doctor, and suggest some medicinal treatment to a good friend that does more harm than good, am I responsible? I'd argue possibly. If I'm saying I'm an idiot about this topic every couple of hours, I'd argue not. I'm not claiming expertise. Even if I've read some articles and I say as much, my friends know me, I don't posture, I don't know shit. I expect them to be responsible enough to act accordingly. Broadcasters have some level of responsibility. I don't know how much that should be or how it should be enforced. I think this might need to be done on the individual level, in your own discussions and considerations.
I just think it's silly when people claim to know the truth and try to silence people, even if it seems clear to you what's correct. I think it pushes everyone into their own sides further. We're not at war with each other and we don't want to be. Be chill, question people with honest and positive curiosity, and be friendly. Maybe you'll bring someone to a more reasonable side, or maybe you'll figure out you're being the unreasonable one. Sometimes people don't bite, but if you try you've done your part.
So unlike the rest of Spotify's ads (for music) you can skip these ads.
Not thrilled about it, but I don’t know if that’s distinctly a Spotify thing or if content creators have the option.
He’s saying you can listen to Rogan, but it won’t be with me. You are free to choose and rock in the free world with whoever you want. The free world doesn’t entitle you to be able to listen to both men on the same platform.
It’s like a 1 man boycott. Nothing wrong with it.
Same thing with a boycott. Do you just randomly boycott companies for no reason? No, you do it because you want them to change a policy that you don't like. In this case, Neil doesn't like that Spotify won't censor Rogan. He left to try to force them to do it. He failed.
https://www.foxbusiness.com/lifestyle/spotify-remove-neil-yo...
> Young reportedly posted a letter that read: 'They can have Rogan or Young. Not both'
Censorship is saying “You can’t have Rogan, and no one can have Rogan”, but that’s not what he said.
He’s just saying he doesn’t want to be associated with Rogan. They agreed to go their separate ways and everyone’s content is still available for purchase by any willing consumers.
I'm sure at various times Neil Young's music was sold in Wal-Mart or other stores that also sold music or other media by other people he disagreed with. He never felt the need to pressure any of them into dropping other artists for fear that they would be associated because they're both in the same store.
Imagine for a second that Neil Young had written something like "There's too many gay artists on Spotify. They need to kick off all these gay artists or I'm gonna pull all my music". He might technically be in his rights to do that and pull his music over that, but I doubt anyone would be on here saying how he's just standing up for his principles and exercising his freedom to choose who he does business with. We'd all be saying that it's a shitty thing to do to try to use your clout to silence people you disagree with. That's what he's doing here. The fact that it didn't work doesn't make it any less shitty of a thing to do. The fact that you might also disagree with the person he's trying to silence also doesn't make it right.
Not true. Young was very willing to pull his own catalog, said as much and then did so willingly and without a fuss. And yes, artists have images to uphold. Music is displayed right next to podcasts on the Spotify Home Screen. It’s totally possible for Spotify to recommend you listen to Neil Young and a Rogan podcast. And it’s really only up to Young what he decides is appropriate for his brand. What seems silly to you might be really important to him.
As for your other examples, this happens all the time in business where someone pulls out of some event or stops selling goods in a store for moral reasons. It’s within their rights. I have no problem with any business refusing to do business with any other business for any legal reason. That’s just the free market.
And no, I wouldn’t berate Young for pulling his products from a store for bogus reasons, I would challenge the reasons themselves, not the act (or threat) of pulling the products.
And indeed, that is what I've been doing this whole time. I never said he wasn't allowed to pull his music, or that he shouldn't be able to. I've said that his reason for doing so - he wants particular podcasts to be censored - is, as you put it, bogus. That is a shitty thing to want, and it should not be promoted by any means, whether it's pulling your music catalog or anything else.
I understand censorship to be the total suppression of content, not a partial restriction of it, or having to view it on one major (similarly priced, similar ease of use) platform instead of another.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/censoring
Censorship:
> to examine in order to suppress (see SUPPRESS sense 2) or delete anything considered objectionable
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/suppress
Suppress:
> to keep (something) secret : to not allow people to know about or see (something)
I haven’t seen any evidence or quotes from Young that request keeping Rogan’s content secret.
I don’t think it counts as censorship if you say a platform no longer has content that’s available elsewhere. At that point, any content dropped from any platform for any reason would be “censorship” and the word starts to lose it’s original meaning.
It is the correct and commonly used definition of the word.
> I understand censorship to be the total suppression of content, not a partial restriction of it, or having to view it on one major (similarly priced, similar ease of use) platform instead of another.
You understand censorship incorrectly then. For example, every television network employs people called censors whose job it is to decide what content is allowed on the network. If you're making a prime time sitcom for NBC and you try to write in the word "Fuck", the censors will tell you you're not allowed to do that and they will refuse to air it. They will censor the word "Fuck". That is censorship. It doesn't mean that nobody anywhere is ever allowed to utter the word fuck, it means they don't allow it. You can go watch HBO and hear the word fuck, but NBC censors it.
> I haven’t seen any evidence or quotes from Young that request keeping Rogan’s content secret.
He said "You can have Rogan or me but not both". The other option there was "not have Rogan". What do you think that means except remove his programming from Spotify?
> I don’t think it counts as censorship if you say a platform no longer has content that’s available elsewhere.
Again, first of all yes it does mean that. Second of all, Rogan is exclusive with Spotify, so it's not available elsewhere.
In this case what Young is asking to be censored is any discussion of vaccines and Covid that doesn't agree with the official government narrative. This should be a huge red flag. Whenever you're not allowed to question the government that is a sign that something is wrong and a warning of totalitarianism. It doesn't necessarily mean that the government is wrong and that the people asking questions are right, but if you are right and have good intentions you should be able to welcome and address any questions to assuage people's fears and not try to silence them.
As in when Neil said "Restrict Rogan's freedom or I'll remove my music"
That is when deciding where you want your work sold restricts someone's freedom.
Joe Rogan is a hilariously bad entertainer and an even worse podcast host, but how could this have gone any other way? If Spotify caved, everyone would have gotten the worst of both worlds: people who don't care would have a diminished Spotify experience while every other artist gets a piece of the virtue-signalling pie, and disenfranchised podcast hosts would just go back to RSS and keep distributing their content to the exact same people.
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/jordan-pet...
Could replace Joe with either of the Weinsteins as well.
That’s what they do. Same with Jordan Peterson.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/rolling-stone-cov...
Rolling Stone - the publication that ran fake rape accusations?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Rape_on_Campus
And you want to talk about dumb as a rock and cite that shit hole rag?
For the record, I am coming from the perspective of having listened to very few episodes, but enjoying what I heard.
Militant extremists, climate change deniers, COVID misinformation, antivaxxers, etc. And he's generally credulous. He had Jordan Peterson in doing climate change denial just the other day.
This misinformation has material negative impact on all our lives. He's like Paltrow's Goop but for men.
And while we have freedom of speech, we also acknowledge as a society that some lies are too dangerous to allow -- that's why fraud, perjury, slander, filing a false report, false advertising, etc. are all illegal. It's just that reality itself can't sue for defamation.
Oh, wait wait wait, no, those people are actually right, it's the ones saying it _is_ happening who are wrong-thinking. Got it. Let me check my notes again; it's the global warming that is definitely happening and cannot be denied, and the great replacement that is definitely not happening and must be denied (or alternatively you can acknowledge it but say it's actually a great thing).
Do you see where I'm getting at? We must debate all those things in a healthy democracy. We can debate whether Russia or the US is right regarding the Ukraine. We can debate immigration. We can debate vaccines. We can debate whether or not it's true that Saddam actually has WMDs and whether it's wise to invade Iraq. We can debate whether or not smoking causes cancer. We can debate whether or not there is actually a risk with asbestos. We should debate all this stuff.
In case my point is not clear in a sarcastic form let me be more explicit: history has shown that we have been wrong about so many things in so many fields (medical, diplomacy, etc.) over the years. And conventional wisdom about certain things can completely flip over time. Thus we should never exclude debate and skepticism.
Can you give a specific example of a material negative impact that Joe Rogan's show has had on your life?
Mmm I’m interested on your reasons for saying that as I think the opposite. He lets the interviewed to talk freely and requests explanations when bullshit claims are made. He never attempts to conduct the interview to follow his way of thinking. It’s a show that surprisingly on these times, doesn’t have an agenda or ideology behind. The show feels like the classic easy going guy from the gym having a innocent conversation with someone who knows about some area.
Overall, I think he is a great interviewer and the only thing I could complain is that sometimes he might brings some wacky people, but hell, I have enjoyed a lot of those too.
I award your claim with 4 pinocchios.
Rogan has a long history of false vaccine claims on his show, presented both by him and his guests:
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/covid-misi...
He'll surely challenge a guest when he thinks they're wrong, it's his own mistruths and the ones he ignores that are at issue here.
The Duke rape case completely blew up Rollingstones credibility pretty much forever it was that egregious.
So what you're saying is that one act of disingenuous credibility should forever taint a publisher? Say...like Joe Rogan?
And Rollingstone has multiple examples of either exaggerating stories or making them up out of whole cloth.
Ok so then maybe don't make statements like this:
> blew up credibility pretty much forever it was that egregious.
There is “misinformation”, saying something untrue, then there is straight up spreading lies you know are untrue (Duke rape case), trying to cover it up when exposed and doing it multiple times.
I think the 2nd can permanently destroy credibility.
You can see him using motivated reasoning to defend the talking point he was trying to advance -- a talking point that itself has an obvious agenda behind it.
I used to think this, but the more popular JRE has become, the more and more I believe it less. The program is deliberately sold as being "neutral" - hence its popularity. Rogan's ideology is "question everything" and "consider everything" no matter how crazy it is. That's the problem - it's slowly turning into a conspiracy theorist field day and an anti-science field day. And it's not facilitating critical thinkers, it's facilitating anarchy.
Anyone who makes a living in media has some sort of agenda - which is to make money. This is why you'll never have an unbiased source in news. It's just literally impossible because at some level, money is involved. JRE is proof you can never truly provide an objective 3rd party viewpoint on news and current topics.
As an example, I've watched the JRE episode on Alex Jones. It's surprisingly well done for how much a wack job Jones is. Rogan does a great job of dismantling Jones's hyperbole and gets him to be, essentially, genuine. While fascinating to watch, it's setting an odd precedent - no matter how much of a wack job you might be, you can always end up on a show with millions of subscribers. If Jones wasn't given a megaphone, he'd just be some village idiot that everyone would ignore.
If Rogan was more objective, less controversial and bring on less interesting guests, he'd essentially be boring. He's the modern day Howard Stern, where people tune in to see "what will JRE's guests say next!".
Hell in "So I Married an Axe Murderer" Mike Myers even does a bit about how his mother reads batshit crazy conspiracy theories and refers to them as "news". Fringe batshit crazy conspiracy theories have always been out there and have always been a space where the far left overlaps with the far right[1].
The problem is that now we have an entire class of politican, forming an increasingly powerful faction in global politics, whose pitch is based on misinformation and it's reinforced by a media network that is increasingly divorced from any sort of regulation or oversight, has the veneer of "news" and the trust that goes with it, but which is just a bunch of sociopaths in equal measures crazy, greedy and stupid, amplifying each other into authenticity.
Social media has enabled this, it would have been impossible to do otherwise.
Yes the writers of Nexus Magazine could publish something and sell it in the newsagent alongside Time Magazine and National Geographic, but what Social Media does is the equivalent of running Nexus Magazine articles inside Time Magazine, or worse it just lets a whole bunch of people who can imitate rational, educated thought create content that too many people fail to differentiate from actual scholarly or journalistic work.
The politicians lend credibility to the shitposters, and the shitposters do the same back. Tucker Carlson, Alex Jones, Tim Pool, Russell Brand, Jordan Peterson, Ted Cruz, Judge Janine, Laura Ingraham, Peta Credlin, Rowan Dean, Pauline Hanson, Malcolm Roberts, George Christiansen, Paul Murray, Rita Pahani, Miranda Devine, Adam Creighton, you name, it, they're all the fucking same, all over the world (I've only cited US and Australia because that's what I'm most familiar with but these same cutouts appear throughout global media and politics).
None of them are "telling it like it is", they're just a bunch of big greedy stinking fucking liars, or they're too dumb or too crazy to know that what they're saying is wildly inaccurate.
The unifying thread of this dangerous and insidious political movement is libertarianism, which has pitched itself as anti-authoritarian but which is ultimately the most authoritarian form of government imagineable (essentially feudalism) because "liberty" and "freedom from regulation" mean very, very different things when you're super rich than they do when you're super poor.
The rebellion against "regulation" has turned into a rebellion against "authority" which has in turn lead to a rebellion against ALL expertise, to the point where football players think they should be able to debunk scientists.
[1] https://gen.medium.com/nazi-hippies-when-the-new-age-and-far...
That is not factually objective.
Alexa, set a reminder for 3 years from now...
It turns out a significant number of people who support free speech also want their favorite platforms to not allow speech they don't like. The argument is "this is not free speech, it's misinformation and it's damaging." If there were valid scientific arguments proving that what we call misinformation is actually damaging, that would be a reasonable position. However, so far I have not seen anything that convinced me.
All I've heard are "just so" arguments akin to "TV/videogames cause violence." What if fake news do not change people's minds as much as it may appear? We tend to listen to viewpoints (fake or not) that confirm our beliefs. All the information confirming our beliefs is out there, cannot be removed from the internet, and we will gravitate towards it. If that is true, then we are paying a high price (asking platforms to police speech beyond the law) for little or no benefit.
Edit: downvoter, I would appreciate if it you could explain how you disagree with my comment.
Specifically, the right of private actors to do or not do this as they please is called “free speech”.
Free speech is an universal principle, probably best expressed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (which the US signed):
> Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
Notice the part I emphasized.
I've noticed this trend on HackerNews in recent years of downvoting without providing a substantive criticism. I'm curious if HN has plans to curve the upvote/downvote system against tyranny of the masses because it seems the principal of charity is not being respected much more
- guest does not know much about it - does not want to start debate on the subject - agrees with him
What about Young - I'm sorry for him, he made a mistake. Music is not about right or wrong, music is nice, and it's emotion. If you want that your music "tells" something, preaches a way to see things, so be it. But what Young did, is the same as I refuse to use Nginx because some pedophile sites use it. Spotify is a platform, for God sake, let it be it. This all messed up and I don't think there is a way out of this stupid situation, other than something really big, really massively bad happening on the planet, or at least in "developed" world, so it kind of resets priorities in people, to the "normal" (whatever that is, but not definitely this)
> These young people believe SPOTIFY would never present grossly unfactual information.
> They unfortunately are wrong. I knew I had to try to point that out.
I believe the crux of the thing lies here, in that second paragraph.
60 years old are the people who believes in TV networks, radios stations and podcasts.
24 years old grew up used to the the fact that “on the internet, nobody knows you are a dog”. Meaning that they know that anyone can say anything on the internet and have a YouTube channel about that, a podcast about that. And that podcast or YouTube channel can look just as a TV news show or a mainstream radio show.
Meaning that they know for a fact that a podcast or a YouTube channel is just someone’s ideas.
That realization actually when further and 24 years old actually understand that a TV show and a radio show also are someone’s ideas, distorted by the need to please advertisers and people who think some things cannot be shown on TV (or the radio).
It’s the 60 years old people that failed to understand those things. They are stuck in the mindset where things shown on a screen (or broadcast in audio) are true and mainstream (as in everyone believed in them).
And they became prey to people (24 years old) who wanted to sell things, win elections or convert them into their cults (ideologies).
So, 60 years old think Spotify should ban joe Rohan. 24 yearly old just don’t listen to it if they don’t like those ideas.
60 years old want to ban some ideas from the world, because they fear that every broadcast idea is true, therefore if those strange and fringe ideas as broadcast, they fear they will become true.
Friends, the earth was moved just below your feet and you didn’t realized that people have always been believing in strange ideas, they just have been restricted out of the TV and radio.
Now that anyone and everyone has its own tv show and radio station, those strange ideas are easily accessible to anyone.
As soon as today’s 24 years old become the world’s 60 years old and the old mindset is gone, things will come back to normal. Meaning: Joe Rogans guests can think whatever they want, I don’t care.
I'm wondering if it has something to do with Condé Nast, because WIRED isn't doing too great either in that regard.
I fear that HN has been on that road since about 2017, the Zeitgeist has changed, or maybe I was just always a strange man with strange principles :p
See https://www.inquiremore.com/p/neil-youngs-transformation-on-...
Sounds like a lot of misinformed bleating to me
I mean, he says that Young's changing views simply mirror the changing views of "the left" then spouts some stat about Democrats. Democrats are left of Republicans, but very few leftists consider Democrats to be of the left in the main
Edit: Looks like he already sold it off recently. Wonder why he has any say on this anymore.
But, in my judgement, they're both making serious mistakes.
Young is making the mistake of trying to summon and/or join a mob to silence someone. And Rogan is making the mistake of not handling his Covid-related conversations with the diligence a pandemic ethically requires.
In neither case do they deserve hatred. The best outcome would be for them, or at least others, to learn from their mistakes.
He's just making it very clear what his position is on Spotify's tacit support of misinformation and he's taking a financial hit to boot.
Comparing Young to Rogan in this instance is a bit of a stretch. Young might force people to think a bit, Rogan either directly or indirectly, is causing people to distrust the vast majority of experts with some sort of dudebro contrarian outlook - and people will die due to it
Young is either hoping that other people will follow his lead or knows that it could happen. That's why he made it a big public announcement. Young is very openly trying to pressure Spotify into cancelling Rogan.
Whether Young's mistake here is as big as Rogan's is a very complex question.
What we can know for sure is that trying to cancel people because you disagree with them is an extremely corrosive thing to do in a free and open society. It's a very big mistake.
Ironically, Rogan’s career in comedy was launched through doing exactly this (cancelling Carlos Mencia).
For example, one would not fairly characterize Hannibal Burris as "cancelling" Bill Cosby's career by outing him as a serial rapist.
If Young was outing Rogan I would have no objection. But all of the behavior by Rogan that Young disagrees with happened in public, for anyone to see. Young is not exposing any new information.
I switched to Tidal, which doesn't have quite as good a selection of artists. They do still have Neil Young.
We aren't children in elementary school. I like being able to hear something and make a decision about what is garbage and what is not. So do a lot of other people. I don't want people to tell me what is "Safe" for me to listen to. Just like I don't want someone to tell me what is safe to read. I want to read Maus. I want to listen to Neil deGrasse Tyson. Sometimes I want to listen to Joe Rogan and his guests. I want to listen to the people who shit all over Joe Rogan and his guests.
The shame isn't that Joe Rogan exists. The shame is an abiding ignorance that makes Joe Rogan a household name.
But seriously, as brilliant of a songwriter and musician he was, it's hard to not suspect he had ulterior motives here. He's been wanting his content off streaming platforms for a while (he's done it before, citing music quality as the supposed reason). This latest stunt vs Rogan/Spotify was a great opportunity for him to earn social brownie points while moving to stream his music on his own platform. Win-win.
He is totally free to do that of course, just as Spotify is free to not be held hostage by his ultimatum.
My guess is it wouldn't matter:
Neil Young is not prepared to spend 3 hours discussing ideas calmly and politely with somebody who listens carefully and challenges him.
I actually hate it when I agree with NY on a topic (quite often) because he makes my side look like the looney toon side.
But in fairness, even then, Rogan attacked his employer and not the individual.
Edit, to add: this is not a comment on the wild conspiracy theories that Joe Rogan entertains.
And you’ve heard Young’s songs. “Keep on rockin’ in the free world” (?) is a staple.
Young’s no Roger Waters (Pink Floyd) though. Easiest decision for Spotify ever
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death
Come on, you can't be on hacker news and have this poor of critical thinking skills, right?
Yet in politics they're immediately as respected as someone with a law degree in constitutional law and philosophy from Harvard.
Can anyone explain to me, why people care about artists' political views?
I've never understood this and I'm being completely serious.
is it a remnant of the '60s anti-war movement?
https://decoding-the-gurus.captivate.fm/episode/robert-malon...
Amen brother, where do I sign up for this
We're in this weird place where we label anything we disagree with as disinformation. I'm a big fan of Joe Rogan's podcast, but not Joe himself. He brings in interesting and different people and allows them to share their thoughts and experiences without interruption you see on TV or much setup, or most importantly, censorship.
You can disagree with what his guests are saying, or his views, but it's really dangerous to push for deplatforming him or his guests simply because you disagree with their views.
If Spotify has to make such calls they're obviously too big.
Hmmm, I like Neil Young, but he's not too relevant to cause such impact.
Hello, 23 but close enough. This is not how I think. Spotify is not the creator of the content, they just host it. Is what Roe Rogan and his guests are saying so awful that you have to bully his host? I must be missing something.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiva_Ayyadurai
Ayyadurai is notable for his widely disputed claim of being the "inventor of email".
This would be at par with the mRNA inventor guy :), and increase Rogan’s podcast credibility…
I love his music and never listened to Rogan, but this just seems like an attempt to stay relevant, while virtue signalling.
I also have the right to uninstall Spotify from all my devices because I don't agree with them platforming anti-vaxxers.
Well I heard ol' Neil put her down
Well I hope Neil Young will remember
A southern man don't need him around anyhow
And the worst case scenario in this attention hungry culture how many others will start making demands like this just for more publicity? I can't read minds. I didn't know this artist before this debacle. It certainly brought him a lot of free publicity. How many people are going to start doing the same now given the amount of free publicity?
Anyway, it’s a huge stretch to say that he’s looking for attention 60 years past his prime, and probably only a few years from his 80th birthday. He’s already made his millions and lives quietly in rural Canada and California.
My guess is that he actually is bothered by Rogan’s content and doesn’t want to be associated with him.
It’s more akin to a boycott than a publicity stunt IMO.
> we've removed over 20,000 podcast episodes related to COVID since the start of the pandemic
Doesn't sound like they're principled on free speech.
It is interesting how Young will stand up against spreading misinformation, and continue to make blatantly untrue statements such as this. I wonder if he somehow isn't up to date with the technology, science and research in this field after being involved in it for so long, or if it is a branding decision and some persona to be kept as a public entertainer.
Spotify has quality setting in app but from what I've heard it's still lower bitrate than Tidal for example and apparently the diff can be heard. (Although I saw some blog a while ago claiming that quality distortion on Spotify is a side-effect of some DRM/watermarking they do).
As far as I know, there is no one who can reliably tell apart 320kbps mp3 and FLAC, and I'm CERTAIN that I can't. Here's a website that let's you try: http://abx.digitalfeed.net/spotify-hq.html fair warning: it's very tedious and it takes a long time.
‘Reliably’, no, it’s accurate to say it’s not possible. It’s occasionally possible given certain samples, though typically only to a fairly well-trained ear. I’ve personally failed double-blind tests against lossless at bitrates as low as 80 kbps (modern encoders are very good). That says also nothing about which sounds better, which is its own subject altogether.
I think it’s fine to advocate for more of a cushion when it comes to encoding and bit rates, even if it’s just a “feel good” thing. Sure, lossless streaming: why not. But Young’s beliefs about digital audio simply don’t jive with reality.
MP3 in particular has some fundamental problems (even at maximum bitrate) when dealing with short sharp sounds (e.g. castanets), which have been fixed in the subsequent generations of audio codecs such as AAC, Vorbis or Opus.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/neil-youngs-long-record-of-spr...
Now, he's free to have his own opinions, but he hasn't exactly been a defender of science in the past. I agree with his vaccination position here, obviously, but that doesn't mean Spotify erred in their judgment either.
I will go cancel my Spotify subscription now.
Personally I don't think anything has changed. He is the same, long form open dialog on topics he is interested it, we need more Joe Rogan's, not less
I remember most of the interviews being Joe bringing in someone to talk about interesting topic (neuroscience, nutrition, mushrooms, astronomy) while Joe sat there saying "woooooo, thats craaaaaazy". That changed when he started interviewing various alt-right talking heads.
But yeah, I might be misremembering things.
because in my experience I have seen the "Alt-Right" be expanded to include a whole host of people that are not what "alt-right" was it was originally described, instead anyone that disagrees with any position of the authoritarian left is now "alt right" also anyone that expresses any support for any person previously called "alt-right" is now themselves "alt-right" by their mere limited association or support..
i could go to COVID as it provides many examples of this, but lets take another hot button issue of the day, Abortion. I am pro-choice 90's style democrat on the topic, I support the idea of "Safe legal and Rare" but if I say the new law out of NJ may be going to far, or that maybe we should not out right celebrate abortions instead viewing it as something tragic that ultimately may be needed and certainly should be outside of the purview of government regulation I am viewed as "Alt-right bigot" for my very centrist and rational position
Reading that over-the-top hyperbole I firmly believe that you're the one that's been moving around.
You have people with very classically liberal positions, libertarian positions, 1990's democrat positions, etc being called "alt-right", including some of the recent guests of JRE
Then you have topics like Universal Healthcare, Gun Control, etc etc.
I mean the "context" is literally everything
as to "who" is the authoritarian left, hmm lets start with this definition. Blue Checkmarks on Twitters, and.or has Pronouns in the bio of any social media platform, and.or rides alone in a car with mask on.
Wow. That's even a worse reply than I imagined.
I know plenty of Uber drivers who wear a mask alone while on then way to pickup for conscience, as getting reported for not having it can get you kicked off, but yes surely those people are the authoritarians.
Unfortunately, it seems that the pandemic has thrown him into a conspiracy hole. I think the whole thing started with one of the Weinstein brothers and the ivermectin push and it just went downhill from there...
This is not about 'free speech' or whatever, it is about a company pushing dangerous content with no way to say 'nah, I'd rather not'. They have zero respect for their users & zero respect for artists.
Fuck spotify.
https://mixdownmag.com.au/news/industry/neil-youngs-pono-to-...
This was an announcement from a little while ago, but I couldn't find it right away. This was his previous "bluff" to remove his music.
Though, they're still in business, they don't seem very active.
EDIT: Early in the morning and I'm not good at finishing sentences my first go out. Sorry =)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pono_(digital_music_service)#S...
Well, I heard old Neil put her down.
Well, I hope Neil Young will remember.
A southern man don't need him around anyhow.
Edit: Downvoted for singing a classic, smh
https://groovyhistory.com/content/123649/ef5e0e961b40d5108f2...