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Comment by Mountain_Skies | Hacker News Reader

Music platforms hosting their music have long offered countless songs glorifying misogyny. Why haven't either of them spoken out against misogyny on the platforms they share? Is misogyny ok? There are lots of podcasts on those platforms with all kind of hate for various different demographic groups. Neither of them have spoken out against those podcasts so they must approve of them. The only moral choice for them now is to remove themselves from all music platforms that host misogynic music, which is pretty much every platform. Also any platform that hosts podcasts must be abandoned unless they approve of the content of all of those podcasts.

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None of those were paid $100M to be on the platform as far as I know

https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/259/257/342...

Perhaps it’s not unreasonable to criticize people on the hills which they pick, Joe Rogans covid stuff is a particularly weird hill to pick over racism or misogyny.

There is vastly more damaging content on spotify than Joe Rogan, some of it is certainly more popular than him.

So is the problem that they aren't acting sooner or that they shouldn't act at all? Because I don't see how an argument that bad stuff is happening invalidates people acting against other bad stuff.

I’m not sure why you think that this would invalidate anything.

I’m just making a simple observation that this hill in particular is a weird one to die on.

And you know, perhaps, if someone chooses to die on this particular hill we can rightfully wonder about their commitment to other, much more meaningful causes?

I don't know, it could just be someone realizing it's a big enough problem to act on? Perhaps they didn't realize how pervasive misogynistic or racist content is on the platform but Joe Rogan got a lot of media attention and this new information caused them to act. Seems reasonable to me.

Edit: I also want to know why you think any of these causes are more meaningful than another. Perhaps it's more meaningful to you, but the world doesn't have to live by your standards. The fact that you might hold different levels of meaning than someone else may answer your question.

> I don't know, it could just be someone realizing it's a big enough problem to act on? Perhaps they didn't realize how pervasive misogynistic or racist content is on the platform but Joe Rogan got a lot of media attention and this new information caused them to act. Seems reasonable to me.

Everything is possible, but I doubt it. How could a musician not be aware of this? Controversy over lyrics isn’t a new thing, even if it has been fading away lately.

> Edit: I also want to know why you think any of these causes are more meaningful than another. Perhaps it's more meaningful to you, but the world doesn't have to live by your standards. The fact that you might hold different levels of meaning than someone else may answer your question.

Your implication that someone talking about nonsensical COVID treatments could be anywhere near as damaging as racism is deeply disturbing.

And don’t forget that this is a podcast that has also featured other comedians like Alex Jones, perhaps you shouldn’t take it seriously?

It seems like you're talking out of both sides of your mouth. You state you aren't trying to invalidate anything, but then you are saying people having different priorities than you are "deeply disturbing." Get over yourself and be honest. Stop trying to imply your just trying to understand when it's clear that's not at all what you are trying to do.

I’m honest. You are drawing a false equivalence between very different things.

I’ll make this very simple for you. What you said was deeply disturbing in the same way as it would be for someone to suggest that theft is worse than murder because of their different priorities.

It is possible for your priorities to suck. Perhaps it’s a matter of opinion, but that’s absolutely meaningless. You could say the same about racism, would that make it better? I don’t think so.

So either we have to limit all speech or no speech? There's no middle ground?

Okay, but why start with Joe Rogan instead of Eminem?

(I’m not advocating for either, but Eminem regularly says far worse things than Joe)

If I may abstract your question to "Why start with a podcast instead of a rapper?", it does make a bit more sense to me to start with a podcast.

At least to me, a podcast has a more informative feel to it than songs. To songs, I listen 100% for entertainment. Could be different for different people, I guess.

I’ve only tried to listen to Rogan a couple of times, but based on those experiences and his general portrayal in the media it’s hard to imagine people viewing him as informational rather than as straight up entertainment.

The guy was heavily criticized for interviewing Alex Jones, a well known comedy sketch character.

Most likely his critics are just people who simply can’t differentiate between entertainment and information, so why treat music any different?

The US had a reality star as president. I don't think people are able to make a distinction between experts and celebrities at this point.

If it's legal, don't limit it.

Spotify doesnt have to actively promote it via suggesting to other users, but stopping unpopular speech all together is how we get things like the lab leak theory being suppressed then suddenly being ok a year later when the mainstream decides it is.

I think comments like this trigger cognitive dissonance.

I have no idea how this would work. Spotify has to make a decision about which content it pays for and which it doesn't, so you can't mandate it carry everything without massive changes to copyright. In this reality, it seems literally impossible for Spotify to carry everything that is illegal speech.

The issue is that a platform that caters to artists bet $100M that a man that has taken more blows to the head than is healthy, and who spreads disinformation about a global deadly public health crisis, is going to be great for business.

People like Rogan are alienated from culture. His listeners are marinated in talk radio, and, for a change of pace, sports talk radio. Sports talk radio consists entirely of men who are totally incapable of coaching elite teams confidently providing their opinion on how those teams should operate. These are the same men who will confidently tell you women should not have bodily autonomy, among other topics they have no knowledge of. Of course anyone who makes art, music, literature, theatre, etc. want nothing to do with them or their no-neck manosphere idol.

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