Spotify deletes 70 Joe Rogan episodes
jremissing.com
jremissing.com
JR sold his catalog of intellectual property (podcast episodes) of his own free will and was paid very well for it: about $100M from what I can gather. What Spotify chooses to do with it is completely up to them, even if they bought it with the express intention of "burning" it all, i.e. never broadcasting it, that would still not be censorship. That would be nothing but exercising their intellectual property rights, that they paid for, just like buying the rights to a song that you hate to stop that specific recording from ever being played again is within your right, or even negotiating with the artist to never play it again.
He signed a "multi-year" exclusive deal (the details are fuzzy, for obvious reasons) which means he sold his trademark and time for money, which is how the market works.
Exactly what he sold (NDA, limitations on his speech in his free time etc.) we'll probably never know, but whoever calls this "censorship" needs a reality check. There exists plenty of proper censorship in the world if you look for it, and this isn't it.
I don't think this is some irreconcilable gotcha. I support the free market as a tool when it delivers on the benefits that it can provide. Those are increasing choice and decreasing costs through increased competition and commoditization. If problems show up I'm happy to have legislation introduced to tackle those, such as not allowing food with known toxins to be sold.
It's like any tool. I support cars when they're used to deliver on the benefits that they can provide; getting people from point A to point B, and giving them the freedom to move between arbitrary locations. When they're used to run pedestrians over then I don't support that usage, and I will support legislation that limits the use of the tool in that manner.
Likewise if the free market is used as a way to reduce the availability of content, I can be against that while still supporting it as a guiding concept.
Instead, I think many of us are arguing that Spotify shouldn’t exercise that option just because of an outraged online mob. That includes those of us that aren’t particular fans of Rogan and wouldn’t be affected if we couldn’t consume his content anymore. Many of us are arguing that as a general principal; don’t give in to a short-lived and irrational angry mob.
I am arguing for Spotify and other content distributors to ignore angry mobs because I worry that eventually such a mob will come for something I do value. E.g., I listen to plenty of music that includes gratuitous levels of profanity. I imagine that such music greatly offends many people, chiefly culturally conservative prudes. Should such an online mob form and demand Spotify stop distributing some of my favorite music then I hope Spotify resists that mob.
Maybe one day I’ll even be a member of such a mob demanding that some platform stop distributing something that offends my sensibilities. While my emotions of hate and outrage may cloud my rational judgment, I hope the platform will have the courage to tell me and my compatriots to pound sand. If we don’t like the content, then we don’t have to consume it.
*Edited to fix a mistake as pointed out in a reply.
I’m welcome to say Spotify shouldn’t “censor” (in the corporate media sense) certain speakers.
And I can cancel/encourage others to cancel their Spotify subscriptions.
And I can keep on using Spotify, but let them know I don’t like their conduct, even though it doesn’t (YET!) make me unsubscribe.
All free market.
Also, you are making wild assumptions about the contract between Joe Rogan and Spotify. Maybe there's a clause in there that they will not only license his shows, but also make them available to their users? In that case, removing the episodes would be a breach of contract.
I hope you understand a little better now.
First of all, WHO ARE YOU ARGUING WITH?!? - "proponent of a free market"? Who are you talking to? Critics of these reactions are not these people, so why on earth are you pretending you want to have a discussion when you deliberately choose to argue with people that have no objection to them? You're talking to an audience of three people, yet everybody that's on your side, the side of censorship will pretend you're refuting the opposing perspective. No, you just picked a tiny group that already agrees with you, pretend it doesn't, and then explain why they actually agree with you.
Ok, so it seems like you're fine with it, because Spotify is a "private corporation", aren't you? Is Spotify free to ban all black artists then? They are a private company after all. Or is that different for reason x / y / z. Fine, let's be a little more theoretical than. Youtube, Spotify and Twitter decide to ban ALL opinions that go against invading Venezuala. Is that something you will support? Private company banning an opinion which they disagree with, all fine and dandy, correct?
Top comment, most upvotes and everyone joins in on this farce... wtf is going on here?
Perhaps they have other principles too, not just the free market as the be-all end-all.
Not to mention that this isn't the free market operating freely -- it's corporations being told what to do by pressure groups (as opposed to customers of those corporations voting with their wallets, e.g. by not listening to Rogan).
There is something deeply wrong with destroying things that haven't yet reached their natural end or not letting them grow, even if one is legally entitled to.
It might not be quite as wrong or bad as, say, state-sponsored blanket censorship, but I think we should call it what it is.
A work was available and now it's not. The only reason being that an entity decided that it should be removed from view. Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information[0].
Here, information has been suppressed, thus, censored.
In reality there is political risk for highly public decisions. Politicians do have power. They can call you before Congress under oath without any evidence of legal wrongdoing by anyone. They can start costly antitrust investigations. They can start costly audits. Anywhere along the way, if you make the slightest misstep (or even if you don't), they accuse you of perjury or lying to a federal official or obstruction of justice. Or maybe they just don't "protect" you as well as they might from various unfortunate events.
Moreover, there's a pattern of governments harnessing the power of private companies to various purposes through this kind of coercion. If you are a CEO with a comfortable life do you really want to test the ideal that it can't happen in the U.S.?
I don't know if this is your opinion or not, but in general, this argument might hold more water if "activists" weren't gleefully trying to shut down relatively free-speech sites like Gab and Parler and others.
You can't have it both ways and claim that business can allow whatever content they want and then try and shut down businesses who do just that.
I believe the core issue here is: while the first amendment applies to government, it is something that businesses should try to make a core part of their ethos. The censorship that tech companies have been doing are really against free speech and freedom of association.
Yes, companies are within their legal right to do the censorship we are seeing. That doesn't mean it's right.
C'mon, you know these claimants only mean "I want a free market for me".
This is a larger cultural question and will determine where we go from here.
Are we still a society that values free expression and open debate?
Not entirely correct, it is a licensing deal, with exclusivity to Spotify. JR is still the owner of the IP, however, it can only be distributed through Spotify.
But your point still stands, Spotify chooses what they will distribute, which is okay.
My only gripe, in this whole Spotify/Rogan saga, is with the mainstream media that sees Rogan as a threat to their business model so they try to slander him for miss-information, while being greater purveyors of miss-information themselves.
It's amazing how people don't get cognitive dissonance over this disingenuous song and dance. The people lauding the choice of private companies to operate as they please when they deplatform are the very people pressuring private companies to deplatform people they don't like in the first place. If you were genuinely in favor of private companies operating as they see fit, you wouldn't feel motivated to pressure them to drop content you don't like.
>What Spotify chooses to do with it is completely up to them
What we don't like is that is it not left "up to them" what to do with their content. The point of the free market is that individuals are left to act independently in their own interests. This ideal is undermined when groups create pressure to deplatform or pull content.
Platforms are contracted by their users, they are not simply homeowners with private property. Too many companies these days get away with code and content changes without proper accountability, and things are regularly hidden to cover tracks... It's making the Internet very toxic now, and the blanket statements don't apply any more, people should always be held accountable for what they do and say in the course of making money at all levels, that's the only real thing protecting us from becoming slaves to corporate interests.
Not everyone who supports free markets is a market fundamentalist. It is not hard to understand that people may support free markets for most goods but oppose them for healthcare, education, senate seats and slaves. Do you really have a hard time understanding that?
>Exactly what he sold (NDA, limitations on his speech in his free time etc.) we'll probably never know, but whoever calls this "censorship" needs a reality check.
Censorship is the suppression of information. You may consider it good, you may consider it bad; it may be done by public institutions, it may be done by private institutions. NDAs are literally a form of censorship. I am not sure what you even mean by censorship if you think that isn't censorship.
Now, if I can't say "cucumber" at all, in any context, whether I entered in any agreement or not - thats censorship.
Very very few people are consistent in their views about privacy, freedom, or property rights. Politics is mostly a football game and the refs are only right when they call it in favor of your team.
As a proponent of Net Neutrality, I recognize that there are instances where corporations should not have the last say in any matter.
A free market with unbounded rights for corporations is not a good idea.
People support the free market because they like freedom. People conspiring to deplatform legal content cuts against that freedom. And they see arguments like this one as rhetorical tricks to get them to disarm and be colonized.
This is just the GPL vs. BSD wars all over again, with people claiming that freedom only means BSD-style and not worrying about the freedom-preserving aspects of the GPL and that if you're pro-GPL you're anti-freedom.
But there is a cultural question that I think this defense sidesteps a bit. I'd frame it as a question.
What level of heterodox opinion would you encourage Spotify (and the like) to tolerate? What opinion would be heterodox to you or your peers that you'd want to see Spotify to defend as the realm of reasonable on a platform of broad interest to the general public?
1. The private corporation “decided” it wanted to broadcast JRE
2. X happened
3. Private corporation decided it didn’t want to broadcast some JRE episodes
People are interested to in what X is
You don't understand why someone would want to have all episodes of their favourite podcast available in one place? Just because someone supports the free market doesn't mean they don't have preferences. Support of the free market just means that one wants buyers and sellers to be able to transact without coercion, it doesn't imply any specific opinion about the practices of a company.
I don't like bad products and don't want companies to do stuff like this. I don't particularly care about Joe Rogan, but I've had a hell of a time finding episodes of various TV shows that have had episodes removed (Community, South Park, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia) from services, and eventually I just end up pirating that episode.
I don't think what Spotify's doing should be illegal but that doesn't mean I have to like it or that I can't say they're making their product worse.
If you are referring to people who want Spotify to be forced to do things by law, like keep episodes up (which would be bizarre), then I'm against that too.
This is not something Spotify woke up one day and decided to do of their own volition, with their own free market defined property. There was much more to it than that.
The White House(!) was calling for this type of censorship! Do you think that might be relevant to the discussion?
this is the new "freedom of speech" sentiment
Now, we get the worst of both worlds, where Spotify funds the production of harmful propaganda (by their own published standards), and also starts censoring independently produced content.
If you are trying to make the distinction that "censorship" is a term with a specific definition that applies to government censorship, I don't think people really disagree with that either, they're just using the phrase loosely because nobody's provided a better concept to apply. Call it corpo-sensorship, or corpoship, or whatever, but until there's a better word people will just keep using the more digestible one in a lazy way.
The issue is not _that_ the episodes were deleted.
The issue is that social pressure resulted in removal of information from (what is considered by most as) the "public realm". This information comes in the form of "open" (seeming) discussion with people who hold various views. This type of debate and discussion should be encouraged by our society.
This stands in stark contrast with the profit motivator that drives those who govern these "public realm"-ish services. This is not a matter of the free market being free, but more that our society is becoming greatly dependent on services that are intrinsically business driven. Those services being seen as the "open forum" that they are not needs to be fixed.
But : the negotiation would have run very very different if they would have said :we buy it, but will never use or publish it!
He might have still sold (for a higher price) or rejected the offer.
You can't change the "purpose" of a contract after it was made.
In german, we have a law, yes a law, basically saying : in treu und glauben (in good faith / in trust and believe) it basically prevents contractors to write contracts which fuck over signers.
It is super rarely used for misuse of contract law / information of the signer, but sometimes it is. This is probably one of those cases.
In good faith, that Spotify will publish his work, he signed the contract.
Being a proponent of free markets doesn't prevent me from criticizing how that freedom is exercised.
> What Spotify chooses to do with it is completely up to them, even if they bought it with the express intention of "burning" it all, i.e. never broadcasting it, that would still not be censorship
It is censorship by any reasonable definition. It's just not illegal censorship.
That's an especially rich take considering the controversy is over actions a company is taking specifically to address other peoples' complaints.
I just don’t want to support it.
So I moved to Apple Music.
For example, if too many episodes are deleted, he will maybe not at all feel the fulfillment and happiness of doing the job he previously enjoyed. That factor ultimately decides if keeping the contract or breaking it is the better solution in the long run.
Fans of JR want him to be able to publish what he wants, since it's a proxy for having fulfilling job and successful podcast. Getting paid a lot is a forgettable factor - once that money is already safely streaming in :)
There was an uproar. What is ironic, one of the party's postulates (visible on their website as a standalone slogan) was that they want to change the law so that businesses can refuse service to any person or group for any reason.
And well, Facebook exercised this law. :)
You can but it needs to be handled through the free market. One shouldn't be asking any government to step in and make some person or company do something.
Then again supporting free market leads to many other unethical things than censorship. Like slavery, why shouldn't you be able to sell some person or yourself to slavery? That is entirely in accord of free markets.
If the government openly pressures Spotify, that is government censorship, which is literally what just happened.
Second:
Because there isn’t a good alternative for distribution.
There really isn’t.
Because the press employs less people nationwide than any time since … who knows, before the 1950s.
We need good information. We need uncensored information and this includes misinformation. We need to hear opinions and points of view including contrarian, controversial, and fringe ones.
I got an something important out of that Alex Jones returns episode. No one else I know thought it had any value, but for whatever reason I saw value in it.
What is the uncensored alternative? Truly.
If cloudflare can shut down whoever they want, if social media shuts down whoever they want, what is the real solution?
If we don’t have an answer, we don’t have free speech, so talking about Spotify being a private company is true but it can’t be viewed in isolation.
Left-wing market anarchists (e.g. the C4SS) would respond that anything involving "intellectual property" is an inherently unfree market that unjustly upholds monopolies on artificially scarce immaterial goods through the threat of state violence.
Does that include Monsanto poisoning the ground? Blackwater lobbying for war in the third world?
Yes, I agree with almost everything you said. However, the issue is that platforms are consolidated. Depending on your chosen format of content, there are only 2-3 viable platforms to reach people - and for some types of content, only one.
And if those very small number of platforms decide to, or are pressured to, delist content or a content creator, this is bad. Okay, you don't want to call it 'censorship', so lets invent a new term - 'kindacensorship'. Kindacensorship is identical to censorship. It has all the properties of censorship and all the negative effects of censorship.
If we had our present day internet infrastructure in the 1950s, there would have been moral outrage at, for example, gay content. And youtube and twitch and reddit would be kindacensoring all gay creators, and all who say that maybe homosexuality isn't so bad, and everything culturally adjacent to these topics. Because the majority demands it. And the majority would have demanded it, because that was the culture of the 1950s.
Then, all those gay creators would have been forced off all platforms, all internet infrastructure, and from all types of mainstream media - tv, radio, etc. Yes, they could have still written their thoughts, but it is an absolute guarantee that they'd languish in obscurity, reaching only each other, but not the masses.
(If we had our present day internet infrastructure in the 1900s, there would have been moral outrage at people talking about desegragation. Or wanting to abolish the monarchy. Or communism.)
Is it not obvious that this would have been bad? Kindacensorship would have stopped dissenters, would have halted the social evolution. And this is exactly what is happening now. The only reason silencing gay people sounds bad, and silencing Joe Rogan sounds good, is because the one message is culturally acceptable, and the other has not yet passed to the Overton window of acceptability. And if we allow kindacensorhip to grow, we will culturally stagnate. All dissenters will be silenced.
Kindacensorship is identical to censorship in form, and in function. Who cares that it's not the government banning books, and it's a (very) small cabal of technological companies deciding what can and cannot be said? Is this somehow better? I genuinely don't think it is.
And I don't know what I'm proposing, exactly. Not sure I know how I'd renegotiate the social contract. I just know that I'm seeing kindacensorship everywhere and it. is. bad.
I see this same argument constantly, in nearly every discussion about a company doing anything bad. It's a meaningless point. Do you people posting things like this really not understand the distinction between right and legal? Or do you think moral considerations are beneath discussion?
Take a look at what happened with Parler. It was a rare successful challenger, although small by comparison, to big social media. Then AOC pressured a few companies to ban Parler and they all complied - whether to build favor with legislators that might regulate them or because it aligned with their politics. The claim that people can just build their own platform doesn’t work in a market this distorted.
As for your redefinition of censorship - I disagree. Legal or contractual allowance doesn’t change what it is. This is censorship.
What I don't understand is how this idea comes up every time something like this is discussed. I'm assuming that this does not receive convincing counter-arguments which is why I will attempt to do so here.
Almost everyone who believes in free markets (except maybe a very few libertarian anarchists) belives in regulation of the markets to restrict bad actors or unintended harmful side effects to the market or the people in general.
Being a proponent of free markets does not mean that you support the idea that market participants can break the laws for the sake of the markets. It also does not mean that one believes the existing laws and regulations are correct and sufficient. Everyone understands that it is an organic process where companies will test the regulations and regulatory bodies have to monitor and act on it constantly.
Some of it requires affected people discussing it and making the regulators and market participants know about the bad effects they feel so that something can be done about it, in one way or another.
I can imagine there being regulations forcing these content hosting platforms to not be able to take down content unless it is explicitly breaking the law as long as they are being compensated for it with no price discrimination. Similar regulations already apply to a lot of businesses.
What is the issue here? It sounds like you only like half the coin.
That's simple enough, but it's also simplistic because it assumes that property rights are the only thing we should care about.
Which value is more important - property rights (which depend on socialized services like justice and enforcement) or free speech (which thrive by removing regulation)?
Before the Spotify deal, you would just see couple of Joe Rogan clips on YouTube and you have sat through maybe 3-4 entire podcasts. You don't care much about MMA or you don't think comedians are that important/hypeworthy as the JRE fandom would claim.
After the Spotify deal you just slowly stopped even seeing the clips because for some reason you just don't care to search for them and YouTube stopped recommending new clips.
You would hear about some hot takes about Joe Rogan vs something but you just don't find it worthwhile to investigate or frankly having an opinion about them.
I find the controversy about JRE to be massively overhyped like the controversy over Howard Stern back in the day.
I don't care about Joe Rogan enough to deal with Spotify.
Rogan was a proactive person conducting open research into the world around him. When proactive people investigate things and share their findings, it now only takes a few to dislike the findings, fuss, and have the findings removed.
To those that support this, I have 4 questions:
1. Is disincentivising sharing knowledge really good for the world?
2. Is it reasonable to expect 100% of inquiries be 100% accurate on the very first attempt?
3. Is it efficient for society to repeat the same research many times since previous investigations are scrubbed from public record?
4. Is it healthy for public discourse to be made less diverse and only concern 'safe' topics?
Joe Rogan is an entertainer. He is not a researcher, and the JRE is not a forum for scientific discussion. Mistaking entertainment for science is a strong sign that you need to deepen your engagement with scientific material outside of the audiovisual entertainment medium.
The motivation behind those actions aren't a desperate attempts to seek truth in a chaotic environment, but people with trying to dominate others.
What kind of research does he do? I've never seen more than the odd clip, but I was under the impression he's just like all other entertainers that interview guests and engage in fairly shallow conversation about various topics.
A lot of people I know would tell you they didn't feel really competent in their (professional) field until they were working for 5 years which happens to align with the magic 10k hours cited as being the requirement to become an expert. Even if Rogan spends a whole year researching a topic that's still only 1/5th of what I'd consider the point where someone's qualified enough to speak publicly on a subject.
When I don't know something about a topic I default to trusting the people who've worked in the field for their entire life.
Here's a great example from tech that I think aligns well with a lot of the controversy we've seen over the last few years...
Years ago there used to be this huge debate about ZFS and a lack of ECC RAM combining to cause a "scrub of death" that would obliterate your data. The idea started on the TrueNAS (FreeNAS) forums [1]. That debate raged for ages and is a perfect example of how uninformed people shouting very loudly can have an outsized impact on public discourse. You don't have to take my word for it either. Here's a forum thread [2] where `ahrens` [3], the co-creator of ZFS, says the "scrub of death" isn't a thing and that non-ECC RAM with ZFS gives you better guarantees than a lot of other filesystems will with non-ECC RAM.
His response is followed by people telling him he's wrong and continuing the debate.
I have a couple questions for you if you're willing to answer. Would you believe the creator of that thread in the TrueNAS forum or the creator of ZFS when they're giving you conflicting information? If you would believe the creator of ZFS in the above scenario, why do you think some people trust celebrities like Rogan over a medical expert like Fauci or, literally, the creators of vaccines?
1. https://www.truenas.com/community/threads/ecc-vs-non-ecc-ram...
2. https://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1235679&p=...
The only thing Apple Music has going for it over Spotify (in my opinion) is that the recommendations are easily 10x better for discovering new content.
Tidal https://tidal.com/
Deezer https://www.deezer.com/
Bandcamp https://bandcamp.com/
Jango https://www.jango.com/
Radio Paradise https://radioparadise.com/
There's also FOSS software for collaborative music with friends, musicians etc:
But when I hear that they are paying $100M to some controversial US podcaster (before Neil Young left Spotify I have never heard of Joe Rogan), I'm thinking, this isn't what I signed up for. I want my money to go towards German indie bands, not rich American celebrities.
I don't know what the majority of Spotify listeners care about, but for my part I know I couldn't care less about podcasts, I just want to listen to music.
So the second that the podcast side started to interfere with the music side in the slightest, I dipped.
No. Censorship is the suppression of speech.
If you don't sell a book because you don't think it fits your store, or you don't think it's profitable, that's not censorship.
But if you refuse to carry a book SPECIFICALLY because you don't like the message, then that IS censorship.
Some forms of censorship are illegal, and some forms are legally required. But that doesn't mean that it's not censorship just because you agree with that's being censored.
No, it most certainly is censorship. It is also business. Those two things aren't mutually exclusive. I'd also note that it is completely legal, but that I (personally) think that such practices are harmful.
> shout at the manager of a shoe store for not selling books?
A shoe store? That's not a good analogy. I wouldn't complain that Spotify doesn't offer downloads of popular software, would I?
Would people complain if Barnes & Noble suddenly pulled a number of "controversial" books from their shelves after public outcry?
Censorship is now a taboo word? That's pretty ironic.
Censorship is not inherently a government action, your post is contrary to the actual definition. [1]
[1] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/censorsh...
When a government tells a company to act, there is always an implicit "or else". That is defacto censorship.
Some definitions have narrowed it's purposes to just "offensive", this one was slightly broader.
Given this meaning, Spotify's action is on the line of security and safety. JRE is taking heat for misinformation about covid, specifically about vaccines and alternative treatments, as well as his history of having platformed Alex Jones.
I'd say preventing snake oil salesmen from selling their products in your market due to safety concerns is a valid employment of censorship. People could actually die due to believing some of these extreme guests. Obviously, legally there is zero problem here since a private company can do as it wishes, freedom of speech doesn't give the freedom to dictate to companies what they must sell.
Then Spotify came busting in and decided that the open podcasting platform is obsolete and paid Joe Rogan $100 million for exclusive distribution of his content. So they’ve dug their own grave here.
Rogan has too. He didn’t have to take the deal that removed his podcast from open distribution and put it under corporate control. But he did. And he paved the way for many others to go down the same path and erode the open podcasting ecosystem. If he hadn’t done it he’d have none of these problems. So he’s dug his own grave too.
I wish both parties nothing but the best in digging their way out of the mess they created for themselves.
It's likely Rogan would have been banned from YouTube and Apple Podcasts had he not moved to Spotify. He could have moved to tiny platforms like Odysee or Rokfin that would likely have poor retention rates, or just relied on people adding his URL manually to Apple Podcasts, but come on. Nobody would do that.
The "death of the open web" problem isn't creators somehow consistently choosing to empower companies that keep hurting them. Users are doing that, and creators follow.
Imagine Tim Ferriss gets banned from all "non-open web" platforms today: podcast app indexes, Google Search, Twitter, Facebook, Spotify. We'll imagine he gets banned for zero reason: did nothing wrong, did nothing different, isn't any intrinsically less relevant or popular than he was yesterday. What's left is his website (if you remember the URL), and newsletter if you're already subscribed. You can add his podcast URL to your podcast app, but his podcast doesn't appear in Search. How much of his reach does he lose, overnight? 50%? 75%?
Google Search isn't the "open web", and if they don't list you, you don't exist. How can one creator fix that?
If i had the ability to just not see this podcast at all (like spotify already does for specific songs) i wouldn't have a horse in this race. However, being involuntarily subjected to something has a way of breeding intense dislike that wouldn't otherwise exist.
He would have always be reliant on others who can be put under pressure to remove jre from their platform
Ultimately they're doing what's good for business, but, well, some of those choices still have consequences.
This is the latest attack in an ongoing war on free speech. We are losing our freedoms. Today it's Joe Rogan's speech tomorrow it's yours.
I suppose at this point he could easily fund hosting the content himself if he can get out of the contract with Spotify.
I disagree, unless he has his own on prem platform. Which isn’t beyond the realm of possibility.
For 100Mi? I'd have a very long list of things I would do for that price. "Selling out?" For sure.
I wouldn't have a podcast with the guests he picked for the show on several topics, surely (but he wasn't made to have those guests).
"Open podcast" is hard if you have to pay for bandwidth, and also it's just one of the most time consuming ways of generating content.
rather than debate the meaning of IP, free markets, or the first amendment, we should he focusing on us - the people. our communites.
why is it that companies think its advantageous to silence people like this? it must be following the money. spotify is following the zeitgeist. the fact that everyone would rather erase this content because its existence is unbearable is a warning side. engendering disgust is a half step from dehumanization, and dehumanization is a half step from death.
The comedians are extremely important to our society, because they have a way of saying things that need to be said that others are often afraid to. In fact when something is funny, its because our minds weren't able to predict the outcome. This is what worries me most, because we are seeing the comedians get silenced for laughing and joking around about political issues. Sure they're just having fun, but they are pointing things out and creating memes that spread through society that need to be heard. If they can't criticize certain ideologies and look at topics from a different perspective, we lose our ability as a society to realign ourselves to improve upon the situation that caused hilarity.
Once the comedians go, then we know people can't just joke around about certain topics. And then we know other forms of silencing are on its way.
That’s basically what so-called canceling is about: asking people to own for their speech.
Every major institution is united to destroy Rogan, including the WH. The Press Secretary -- speaking on behalf of the US Govt -- demanded Spotify do more to stop him, and this is treated as normal and benign. Ask Julian Assange if effective dissent is permitted.
The power derived from controlling the flow of information is immense. That's why every tyrant and authoritarian wields censorship power. Tyranny can't exist without it. And as Orwell and Chomsky have both said, the most effective form isn't jailing dissidents but doing this.
Read what Orwell said about why censorship in the UK during the war was so much more effective than the overtly autocratic regimes that just imprisoned dissidents.
We're at the point where we also arrive in these cycles. If you object to the attempt to silence Rogan, then you will be instantly tarred with the same brush used to try to destroy him: You're a racist, anti-vax, etc. etc. That's the enforcement mechanism to keep everyone quiet.
-Glenn Greenwald
Apparently those 70 episodes have racial slurs in. It's not really an "all-out war on Rogan" as much as "Spotify don't want to be seen to be hosting racial slurs in their most visibly public content that they made a specific point of paying $$$ for", right?
Eventually one big content creator is going to move over to Web3 and it will cascade from there.
Every Web3 naysayer/sockpuppet will have to eat their lunch.
Say Rogan moves to Web3, that's it.
Comedian: 45, Political Commentator/Media Personality: 8, Brian Redban: 5, Health/Fitness: 2, Scientist: 2, Author: 2, Musician: 1, Pornstar: 1, (MMA) Fight Companion: 1, Giorgio Tsoukalos, Kevin Smith, Cliffy B & Johnny Cristo (can't even figure out who these last two are)
I'd love for someone to get Neil Young's take on this now.
Edit: Oh look, it's not just because Young made a stink about COVID shit, imagine that...
>Rogan went on Instagram Saturday to discuss the content of the old episodes, addressing two videos on social media of him saying a racial slur and another where he described a Black neighborhood as being similar to the Planet of the Apes movie.
https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/more-than-70...
People who grew up secular are completely unaware of how Southern Baptist in style all of this canceling and moralizing is. Like the church ladies, they turn moralizing into a competitive sport, and everyone loses.
What does Joe Rogan have to do at all with evangelical Christians?
I have to say, I am quite resentful of people now. Because there was such amazing tool that you could learn other people's view and thoughts and a handful of loud mouths killed it.
Also, why would a content service policing its own content be in any way related to "The Open Web"?
Now if the domain providers, ICANN, ISPs, or any such internet utility entities would be actively doing this, that'd be a story about the web openness. Not a large streaming service deciding what to stream. Joe himself sold out to this entity knowing about this precise outcome. This has nothing to do with the web itself.
[April 13, 2021] https://www.businessinsider.com/joe-rogan-experience-podcast...
> "If we want even a shot at achieving our bold ambitions, it will mean having content on Spotify that many of us may not be proud to be associated with," Ek said during the town hall. "Not anything goes, but there will be opinions, ideas and beliefs that we disagree with strongly and even makes us angry or sad."
https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/more-than-70...
At least he's sad. But sad tears are dried by dollars notes?
Blockchain aside, I do find it amusing that we can basically go back to 2005 tools to avoid some of this accelerating authoritarianism. Rip podcasts to MP3s, torrent or email them around. Same with movies, video clips, etc. Sure, mass distribution becomes less instant, but nobody can argue that Doom wasn't popular when it was released just because it wasn't on Steam or whatever.
The Rock just announced on Twitter some news about finding out just how much Joe Rogan used that slur.
News spreads fast in Hollywood circles. Maybe Spotify is trying to get ahead of the curve before any more controversies break out.
Love or hate JRE's content, I don't think anything good comes from silencing people
I wonder if it's not so much about the selection of the episodes as it is they'll be deleting many of them, and it just takes a while.
Unfortunately I think attacks on his having been prescribed ivermectin and his guests like the highly published cardiologist and the guy that contracts with the defense department and has patents related to MRNA really got on his nerves and recently he’s been leaning too hard into the “mainstream media lies” discussions, it’s nearly bordering on an obsession. I was surprised he was even discussing it with Jim Gaffigan.
We’re at a very bad place in American discourse. In a recent episode (past 2 weeks) Bill Maher quoted some survey that nearly a majority of Americans believe that we’re headed towards a civil war.
Attacking, degrading, deplatforming and silencing our fellow citizens is only going to push us further towards the brink.
Yet if true, this is such BS. It's hard not to see Rogan, with his massive and mostly bipartisan audience, yet still polarizing and controversial discussions, as a litmus test for how well the West really embraces dissent. We're supposed to have invented dissent, right? And Joe Rogan, he's our little free speech canary--and the Western culture is killing him.
But if you don't care about this or don't think it's important, try to remember that bastard time traveling love child of Donne and Orwell: never send to know for whom the censors come.
Sigh. He shouldn't have posted that 9 minutes video "addressing the controversy" and taken such a conciliatory tone. People see those things as weakness or creating a fake-pretext to make it easier to censor him.
From Joe's perspective he probably doesn't care. He's got the exclusive deal, so not going to lose a dime if Spotify cancels him, and even if they does lose money... he probably doesn't really need the money. He's his own platform, his audience is in love with him not with the delivery mechanism.
From society's point of view these kind of binary outrages about censorship, to me, relate to a recent Glenn greenwald tweet where he says that society's going to end up needing two of everything depending on one's ideology: segregated websites, etc. And I think that's probably the point because the outrage about different views is helping to manufacture consent for introduction of a Chinese style censorship system in the West. But it'll be worse than the Chinese system which is guided by some sort of people focused ideology, as it'll be something corporate.
In light of the possible oppressing nature of this the smart thing for individuals to do is not to engage in these ridiculous outrage battles, to avoid inflaming this intolerance of other people's views. Instead of letting yourself be used to manufacture consent for whatever new horror is slumbering towards Bethlehem to be born, set yourself to manufacture your own tolerance toward people with different opinions and not let your strings be pulled by whoever is seeking to inflame these kind of divisions.
I mean we're supposed to be "the permeable", right? (Short Bus).
There are other multi-episode guests who had them all banned, like, I think, Dave Asprey, who is a blowhard. I think those who say things that situationally get their content removed are probably pushing the edge in a way I can appreciate.
So many artists I listen to don't have a legitimate way to purchase their music, so moving to completely owned music is difficult (this would be optimal for me). Even if I was able to make that move, finding new music would be a lot more difficult. I will say that Spotify is 100% responsible for the new music I find, which it does do a good job at.
The problem is that the Spotify alternatives are even worse than Spotify. I really do think it is the best I have, but god damn do I dislike a lot about it.
I think this may not be political. They may just want to tighten up the catalog, polish the brand they purchased, and have just the very best material?
Now spotify has complied with the government's wishes. We're now beyond "but it's a private company...", and indeed into censorship.
Glen Greenwald did a great piece on this topic a couple of days ago: https://rumble.com/vtyr34-democrats-are-pressuring-companies...
Sad to see all the removed episodes are heavily comedian episodes…
Maybe the move to Spotify shielded him for a while, making it harder for people to just run across these episodes by chance.
The Ancient Aliens guy? They sure are casting a wide net.
I mean, it's one thing to try to clamp down on medical misinformation during a pandemic, but it's an entirely different thing to clamp on harmless wackiness.
We have an economy that functions by virtue of central banks pumping billions into venture capital firms. Venture capital investors in turn speculate on big tech companies that never make any profit. It's a top-down regulated economy full of Ponzi schemes, where a handful of brokers with a virtually unlimited supply of government money make the rules. That is why big tech and big business agenda's are constantly at odds with the popular opinion on the internet and society. They don't care because it is no longer your money they need.
>In another clip, Rogan spoke to a guest who has parents of different skin colors. "Powerful combination, genetic-wise, right?" Rogan said. "You get the body of the black man and then you get the mind of the white man all together in some strange combination... that doesn't, by the way, mean that black people don't have brains. It's a different brain. Don't get me wrong."
I can see some of the nuts on the list (like Eddie Bravo and, of course, Alex Jones), but seeing Gad Saad came as a surprise. Also, anyone knows what could have been wrong with David Seaman? (I haven't heard his episodes nor anything about him outside of his soccer/goalie career. But curiously he seemed to have been on the show pretty frequently.)
Where the understanding breaks down is, why now? Why Rogan? Why Covid? What about all the other ills of the world that need addressing and fixing? For those they're silent? Things more long running and sure to keep running long after Covid and/or Rogan is gone.
As a priority, is Rogan + Covid a top issue? Or is there something more nefarious going on here?
https://twitter.com/kingbullyo/status/1489666078431236100?s=...
It’s pretty fascinating.
I get some of the names are problematic (from Spotify point of view) but Ferriss? There was a time when he was promoted all over the world.
It’s not like now the people who believed what he was saying are going to shrug their shoulders and start reading the “New England Journal of Medicine”.
https://nypost.com/2021/10/14/joe-rogan-takes-on-sanjay-gupt...
I find it really disturbing when our definition of "misinformation" is so one-sided.
A lot of people now suddenly hate Joe, the same way they hate Jordan Peterson, the same way they hated Trump. Every comment will have a preface or disclaimer: "I'm not a fan" in so many words. I did it above.
In a short time that will turn from "I don't support him but..." into something akin to "I see you referenced him, therefore I disregard anything else said"
First they spent $100m on a very controversial figure, just to get an exclusive contract.
When he acted controversially they stood up for him, making plenty of people mad and getting others to disassociate themselves from Spotify (Young, Mitchell). Wouldn’t surprise me if they were having some quiet issues with sponsors/ads.
Now they seem to be removing episodes, but reportedly not the controversial ones? This of course goes over poorly with both the pro (why remove them?) and anti (why not the problem ones?) camps.
Hope it was all worth it Spotify. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer company trying to destroy a formerly open ecosystem.
My guess is it'll be against some country singer who is against abortion/anti illegal immigration.
And what is his relation to Jordan Peterson? I'm seeing a weird attempt to link the two in the media (presumably as an attempt to use the former to discredit the latter) but I've never even heard of Joe Rogan except in the context of trollposts (which usually do not give the necessary background I need to know what's going on)
The biggest political shift in history is happening right now.
There's been a 14% shift from Democrat to Republican in the PAST YEAR.
Censorship over open dialogue is always a short sighted solution and it turns people from colleagues who disagree into enemies.
Reference: https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q...
What Spotify is doing now just pisses off both sides. Pro speech people don't like this, JRE listeners don't like this, and anti Rogan people won't stop until he's 'canceled' completely.
Hope all you Rogan haters love Rogan because this is how you get more of him. Congrats!
Conservatives are dropping their principles- meaning why should we give the left free speech or services from private companies when they deny that to the right. We want revenge. We want AG from GOP states to investigate these companies for fraud, theft, or discrimination.
They are no longer a neutral company. Period, and this is war.
Conservatives can no longer expect services from lefty companies.
How about truckers, who are conservative, not deliver food to lefty cities. How will they like that. So now lefty's need to start their own lefty trucker companies so they can get food. It is a private business, go start your own trucking company to get food- how do you like that?
But on a serious note, podcasting was originally just mp3 files freely distributed to be played on ipods. It's anathema to ever have a centralized platform like Spotify hoarding exclusive rights and control.