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Comment by dvt | Hacker News Reader

Here's a hot take for you, HN: this all started with the maniac known as Alex Jones. Everyone was okay with him getting deplatformed because he's a cooky conspiracy theorist that genuinely spreads insane misinformation (and was hurtful to Sandy Hook victims). Now, we're going after literal radio personalities. Tomorrow? Musicians? Authors?

Book burning has never led to a socially-uplifting culture. I think being a free speech quasi-absolutist is the only viable position (apart from obvious edge-cases like yelling "fire" in a crowded movie theater, fighting words, etc., which SCOTUS is very careful to delineate).

Folks really need to read some John Stuart Mill. It's a shame to see such vitriolic response to a right our ancestors literally died for.

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No, this is how it’s supposed to work. People say things that are unpopular, then other people complain and withdraw their support. Each of those people are exercising free speech.

This is what the “marketplace of ideas” looks like. The evolving tension between different factions and ideas is a feature, not a bug.

A handful of multinational corps are supposed to host and facilitate the grand majority of human culture and communication.

Weird. I must have missed the historical text about rights and freedoms that compensated for this.

I think in a marketplace of ideas, many ideas are available, and the better ideas are embraced. The bad ideas stay on the shelves. But they do not get thrown out, at least the bar for that should be high.

Agreed. I would add that in a marketplace of ideas, people try to persuade others, rather than pressuring authorities to intervene in the expression of ideas they disagree with.

I agree with that too.

And to take the metaphor one step further, which may be to go too far, if someone does not want to have their ideas on the same shelves as some other ideas, the best is if the marketplace is big enough that there are other shelves to move to. For example, there are more record companies than there are streaming services. The consolidation that seems inevitable in the Internet era works against a truly diversive market. Traditional bookshops worked much better for this. The convenience that many values, to have everything in one place, has disadvantages too.

“Marketplace” like a market economy, where people are free to introduce new things, organize themselves, and try to attract support.

Not marketplace like a grocery store where you go shopping.

Hmmm. No. In a "marketplace of ideas," each idea has a price. Some are held dear and others are viewed as worthless. Regardless, each idea is available to you, and to future generations, for consideration. What we see here is not a functioning "marketplace of ideas." Rather, it is the illiberalism of puritan times and other dark ages where certain thoughts and attitudes could not be considered because a faction explicitly removed them from the marketplace.

When reading books like "The Scarlet Letter" way back in my younger days, I always thought of them as being so irrelevant. Unfortunately, I didn't understand they were actually sci-fi novels. My only consolation now is that perhaps a new crop of Americans eventually emerges that views the moral panics of today with as much exasperation and disdain as I viewed the moral panics of the 1600s.

I agree with you but I am really interested to watch this play out. It feels like, for lack of better term, the rabid 'cancel culture' folks are dug in on canceling someone who seems by all appearances un-cancellable(sp?). This guy has a way bigger following than Jones did.

It will be interesting to see how this goes. My hope/wish is that Spotify tells everyone to pound sand, and this trend of mobbing people can begin to end. Or they do the opposite, Rogan goes to some more erm, 'open' platform, and we end up with some weird even more divided internet.

> I think being a free speech quasi-absolutist is the only viable position

I disagree.

I think that deplatforming Alex Jones is probably a good idea, and deplatforming JRE is probably a bad idea. If I could choose, I'd deplatform one but not the other.

I think that's a perfectly consistent point of view to hold. The line has to be drawn somewhere - but I don't know why it can't be at a nuanced place in between these two.

Given Joe Rogan was given 100 million dollars, and is constantly pushed on the front page of my Spotify account, and his show continues, in what way is he being deplatformed, or silenced?

In that Spotify forcibly removed more than 100 of his episodes.

They did no such thing. JRE requested the removal of those episodes.

I didn't notice that in the articles I read about it. Can you point out where one says that?

Here you go.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/02/06...

They will not because they just made that up.

I am not a liar. Stop throwing around accusations and inform yourself.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/02/06...

Quote: Spotify’s chief executive said it was Rogan’s decision to remove episodes of “The Joe Rogan Experience” from the platform following discussions with the company about “some of the content in his show, including his history of using some racially insensitive language.”

I took dvt’s comment to refer to the wider phenomenon of unpopular opinions getting deplatformed. And although JRE is still on the air, didn’t Spotify remove like 70 episodes?

I'll wear the fact that neither TY nor Spotify ever suggest JRE to me like a badge of honor.

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