Explainer: The Whole Spotify / Joe Rogan Thing Has Absolutely Nothing To Do With Section 230
from the so-just-stop-it dept
I really wasn't going to write anything about the latest Spotify/Joe Rogan/Neil Young thing. We've posted older case studies about content moderation questions regarding Rogan and Spotify and we should have an upcoming guest post exploring one angle of the Rogan/Young debate that is being worked on.
However, because it's now come up a few times, I did want to address one point and do a little explainer post: Spotify's decisions about Rogan (and Young and others) has absolutely nothing to do with Section 230. At all.
Now, we can blame Spotify a bit for people thinking it does, because (for reasons I do not understand, and for which both its lawyers and its PR people should be replaced), Spotify has tried to make this about "content moderation." Hours after Spotify's internal "content policy" leaked, the company put out a blog post officially releasing the policy... that had already leaked.
And, when you're talking about "content policy" it feels like the same old debates we've had about content moderation and trust and safety and "user generated content" websites and whatnot. But the decision to keep Rogan on the platform has nothing, whatsoever, to do with Section 230. The only issue for Section 230 here is if Rogan did something that created an underlying cause of action -- such as defamation -- then, there might be a Section 230 issue if the defamed individual chose to sue Spotify. Spotify could then use Section 230 to get dismissed from the lawsuit, though the plaintiff could still sue Rogan. (If you want an analogous case, years back, AOL was sued over something Matt Drudge wrote -- after AOL had licensed the Drudge Report in order to distribute it to AOL users -- and the court said that Section 230 protected AOL from a lawsuit -- thought not Drudge himself).
The thing is, no one (that I can find at least) is alleging any actual underlying cause of action against Rogan here. They're just arguing that somehow Section 230 is to blame for Spotify's decision to keep Rogan on their platform.
But the question of Spotify's decision to keep Rogan or not has nothing to do with Section 230 at all. Spotify has every right to decide whether or not to keep Rogan in the same manner that a book publisher gets to decide whether or not they'll publish a book by someone. And that right is protected by the 1st Amendment. If someone sued Spotify for "hosting Joe Rogan," Spotify would win easily, not using Section 230, but for failure to state any actual claim, backed up by the 1st Amendment right of Spotify to work with whatever content providers they want (and not work with ones they don't).
Unfortunately, Spotify's founder Daniel Ek made matters even dumber yesterday by pulling out the mythical and entirely non-existent "platform/publisher" divide:
At the employee town hall, both Ek and chief content and advertising business officer Dawn Ostroff “repeatedly used the phrase ‘if we were a publisher,’ very strongly implying we are not a publisher, so we don’t have editorial responsibility” for Rogan’s show, said a second Spotify employee who listened to the remarks — and who, like some Spotify employees listening, found the executives’ position “a dubious assertion at best.”
In a chat linked to the town hall livestream, “A large portion of the angry comments were about how Spotify’s exclusive with Rogan means it’s more than just a regular platform,” said one employee.
That LA Times article, by Matt Pearce and Wendy Lee (who are good reporters and should know better), then confuses things as well, implying that Section 230 depends on whether or not a website acts as a "publisher or a platform." It does not. Section 230 applies equally to all "interactive computer services" with regards to content provided by "another information content provider." There is no distinction between "platform" and "publisher." The only issue is if Spotify helps create the content -- in whole or in part -- and courts have determined that merely paying for it doesn't matter here. It's whether or not the company actively had a role in making the actual content (and, more specifically, in contributing to the law-violating nature of any content). But that's not the case here.
Still, with all this talk of "platforms" and "publishers" and "content policies" and content moderation -- people seem very very quick to want to somehow blame Section 230. Superstar tech reporter Kara Swisher went on Anderson Cooper's CNN show and argued that Spotify doesn't deserve Section 230, which is weird, again, because Section 230 isn't implicated at all by Spotify's decision.
“It’s great to have different opinions. It’s not great to put out incorrect facts. There is a difference. There still is, no matter how you slice it.” @karaswisher on Spotify’s decision to add a content advisory to all podcasts that discuss Covid-19. pic.twitter.com/e7aYCe1ALt
— Anderson Cooper 360° (@AC360) February 1, 2022
Then, the folks at Sleeping Giants, an activism group that I think does really great work communicating with advertisers about where their ad dollars are going, also tweeted about the LA Times article suggesting that it was another reason why Section 230 was "too broad." After I (and many others) tweeted at them that this wasn't a 230 issue at all, they quickly apologized and removed the tweet:
Okay, @mmasnick and @evan_greer, two people who are extra knowledgeable on 230 and whose opinions I trust pretty much body slammed me on this, so I’m going to do some penance and dig deeper. Apologies to all.
Lesson learned. Never tweet, then go to a show for two hours. pic.twitter.com/q6W5Yqlrqh
— Sleeping Giants (@slpng_giants) February 3, 2022
But since so many smart people are getting this confused, I wanted to try to do my best to make it clear why this is not a 230 issue.
And the simplest way to do so is this: How would this situation play out any differently if Section 230 didn't exist? If it didn't exist then... Spotify still would be making decisions about whether or not to cut a deal with Rogan. Spotify, just like a publishing company, a newspaper, a TV cable news channel, would have a 1st amendment editorial right to determine who to allow on its platform and who not to. 230 doesn't create a right to editorial discretion (both up and down). That already exists thanks to the 1st Amendment.
Indeed, if you're thinking that Spotify might somehow be liable if someone gets hurt because they listened to someone spreading stupid advice on Rogan's podcast, that's not going to fly -- but, again, because of the 1st Amendment, not Section 230. As Section 230/1st Amendment expert Prof. Jeff Kosseff explained in this great thread, book publishers have (multiple times!) been found to be not liable for dangerous information found in the books they publish.
There has been a lot of talk about Spotify, Joe Rogan, and Section 230. The problem with the discussion is that 230 is irrelevant because there is not a viable cause of action against Spotify -- or Rogan -- for health misinfo. These books from the 80s explain why. pic.twitter.com/o1iFPfVvBt
— Jeff Kosseff (@jkosseff) February 3, 2022
In both of the cases he describes, people were injured, tried to hold the book publisher responsible for telling them to do something dangerous, and the courts said the 1st Amendment doesn't allow that.
or the surrounding legal doctrines to suggest that such a duty should be imposed on publishers . . . Were we tempted to create this duty, the gentle tug of the First Amendment and the values embodied therein would remind us of the social costs."
— Jeff Kosseff (@jkosseff) February 3, 2022
So then, the only way 230 comes into play here is in the specific case of if Rogan broke the law with his speech on the podcast (with defamation being the most obvious possibility). As far as I can tell, Rogan has never been sued for defamation (though he has threatened to sue CNN for defamation, but that's another dumb story for another day). So, the risk here seems minimal. Some people have suggested suing for "medical misinformation" but anything Rogan says along those lines is almost certainly protected 1st Amendment speech as well. But, if Rogan somehow said something that opened him up to a civil suit and the plaintiff also sued Spotify... Section 230 would... help Spotify... a tiny bit? It would likely help Spotify get the case tossed out marginally earlier in the process. But even if we had no 230, based on how the law was before Section 230 (and the examples like those shown by Jeff Kosseff), the courts would likely say Spotify could only be liable if it had knowledge of the illegal nature of the content, which Spotify could easily show it did not -- since Rogan produces the show himself without Spotify.
So in the end, 230 provides Spotify a tiny kind of benefit here -- the same it provides to all websites that host 3rd party content. But that benefit has nothing to do with the decision of whether to keep Rogan or not. It would only apply to the mostly unlikely situation of someone suing, and even then the benefit would be something akin to "getting a case dismissed for $50k instead of $100k, because the case would still be dismissed. Just with slightly less lawyer time.
We can have debates about Joe Rogan. We can have debates about Spotify. We can have debates about Section 230. All may be worth discussing. But the argument that Spotify keeping Rogan has anything to do with Section 230... is just wrong. The 1st Amendment lets Spotify host Rogan's podcast, just like it lets any publisher publish someone's book. Taking it away won't change the calculus for Spotify. It won't make Spotify any more likely to remove Rogan.
So, go ahead and have those other debates, but there's no sense in trying to claim it's all one debate.
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Filed Under: content moderation, daniel ek, intermediary liability, joe rogan, liability, licensing, podcasts, section 230
Companies: spotify
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Part of the problem listed in the previous article has its answer in this article. Where people do not like some content, rather than avoiding it and its creator, they try to get it removed, and in doing so bring it to the notice of a lot more people. Also, section 230 is being used as an excuse for failing to stop others hearing what the attackers hate.
If Joe Rogan was not so controversial as to get negative coverage, would he have the audience that he does now. I for one only know of his podcast because of it being attacked.
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Additionally, even if Rogan did break the law, Section 230 would still not be in play, as Rogan is not just a third-party publisher using Spotify as his platform; Spotify has a specific paid deal with Rogan to exclusively produce his lies there.
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Re:
Yeah no. The content Rogan creates is antivaxxers and Neonazis. You can't avoid that by not listening.
And it's not surprising to see the deliberate dishonesty of lying that it's just a trivial matter of "do not like / hate."
And your malicious lie that deplatforming (which, in the real world, is not silencing) leads to more exposure, when reality shows the opposite. Your motive is clear - your sole intent is to spread as much harm as possible.
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Re: Re:
How the hell did you jump from ignore to deplatforming, which was nowhere in what I said.
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Re:
No, the paid part doesn't change the calculus. It's still 3rd party content. See the Drudge case I pointed to...
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I can see how S230 is sort-of tangentially related to the Rogan/Spotify issue, only because the justification for S230 is similar to Spotify's policy. S230 is good because it doesn't make any sense to blame a platform for things that other people say on the platform. Similarly, Spotify is saying they shouldn't be blamed for things Rogan says on their platform. The difference of course is that S230 is about legal liability, while most of Spotify's critics are arguing that Spotify has a moral responsibility to fight misinformation. And even if you think platforms aren't morally responsible for everything said on the platform, it's a lot harder to say they have no responsibility when they're paying for an exclusive right to the content.
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Disallowed
There are a growing number of people, both in the U.S. and the western world, who are increasingly intolerant of any speech with which they disagree. They view themselves ever being exposed to an opposing viewpoint as an affront to their very existence. And they even view it as unconscionable that anyone else would be permitted to listen to these opposing viewpoints, even if those others actively sought out the material.
These Individuals are facists. They will do anything to prevent opposing speech, and they will seek to tear down section 230 if it stands in their way. That's the connection.
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To be fair making this about s230 isn't that much of a stretch as pretty much every time someone mentions they have a problem with s230 what they really mean is they have a problem with the 1st Amendment.
Though it's a bit of a moot point anyway considering Spotify are based in Sweden and thus more beholden to EU regulations which are generally more restrictive than American regulations when it comes to speech.
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Re: Disallowed
Bravely bold Sir Koby
Rode forth from the Internet.
He was not afraid to die,
Oh brave Sir Koby.
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Re: Dis-owned
I don’t much care for MAGAts either bro.
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Re: Re:
“Malicious lie”? Trying to spread as much harm as possible? Were someone to characterize those assertions, one might offer up “spittle-flecked” or “rage-filled”.
Not everyone who disagrees with (opinion) wants to eat the world.
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David Crosby got it right
Not censorship, not "cancelling", just a simple boycott. No need to make a 1A or 230 case out of it.
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Someone who platforms quacks, liars, grifters, and malicious assholes for the sake of “just asking questions, bro” may not want to watch the world burn. But that someone sure as shit isn’t doing much to help stop the people who are more than happy to set the world aflame.
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Another Angle to this Story
I think there is also a copyright angle to this story. Whatever you think about Rogan, its not a good thing that these musicians are using their large catalogs of copyrighted works (which, one might argue, should be in the public domain by now) to attempt to bully companies into de-platforming people. What if some huge artist or label told Google that they had to de-list techdirt or get their music pulled form Google play. This opens the door to a new way using copyright as a tool to bully others.
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Person A: I, a queer person, believe I have every right to exist and participate in society.
Person B: I, a known anti-queer religious asshole, believe queer people should stay out of the public eye forever and a day.
Koby: Yes, these both seem like reasonable viewpoints that can and should be debated.
…and in case that goes over your head: The point, you disingenuous vacuum cleaner bag, is that some speech is so vile and odious that its only legitimate defense is that it’s not actually illegal to say such things. It’s not worth arguing against because it’s not presenting a serious or even valid argument.
Marginalized people don’t want to, and shouldn’t be forced to, hear/read speech that further marginalizes them and opens them up to all kinds of abuse from others. But under your logic, all that shit is just “an opposing viewpoint”. When a GOP candidate essentially says he believes women should be forced to bear a rapist’s child because “God put them in this moment”¹, that isn’t so much an “opposing viewpoint” as it is an affront to women everywhere (and rape survivors in particular).
It’s one thing to disagree about whether Wordle is a fun game or whether Spider-Man: No Way Home is better than Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 2. It’s a whole other ballgame to disagree about whether trans people should be able to live openly in public or whether measures to stem the transmission of COVID are worth the price of “liberty” (i.e., fealty to those who whine about mask mandates and 5G in the vaccines). I know you don’t give a shit about anything but yourself, Koby, but you could at least pretend to try to care about other people for a few minutes a day. Who knows, maybe it would make you less of a right-wing asshole who thinks “gay people shouldn’t have any rights” is an “opposing view” that needs to be “debated”.
You mean like the Republican lawmakers and conservative school boards that are banning/trying to ban books like Maus, The Hate U Give, and even books by Judy Blume from schools and public libraries around the country? You mean like the Republican lawmakers in Oklahoma who are trying to pass a bill that would fine teachers for saying anything that upsets religious feelings²? You mean like those fascist assholes?
¹ — Citation.
² — Citation.
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Making the “it’s either me or Rogan” ultimatum isn’t an attempt at censorship, either—if Spotify were to dump Rogan tomorrow, it’s not like he would be banned from posting new episodes of his podcast literally everywhere else on the Internet. He isn’t owed a platform on Spotify and he isn’t owed the reach he gets thanks to Spotify. Nobody is owed those things for any reason whatsoever.
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Re: Disallowed
Technically they aren't (all) fascists. They are, however, making it impossible to have a conversation because you get your career ruined if you accidentally say the wrong thing. They are censorious totalitarians, not fascists.
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This only works if the artists actually own all the rights to all their music. Taylor Swift, for example, could have all her newer stuff yanked from Spotify if she so chooses—but a lot of her older works, including the original versions of the albums she has recently re-recorded, are not under her control.
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Oh, I’m sorry, are consequences for one’s actions not a thing you believe in? Or do you think everyone these days is just too goddamn fucking sensitive?
Besides, before what you’re referring to was called “cancel culture”, it was called “moral crusades”, and leftists didn’t invent it, conservative Christians did.
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Re: Good Point
True. Still, I fear that our perpetual copyright turns culture into a hostage to negotiate with.
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You’re a bit late for worrying about that; the DMCA has literally been used like that for years.
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The bigger problem is Senators, like Warren, or the White House demanding private companies take down content (basically censoring opposing viewpoints) they don't like.
Government officials even merely suggesting censorship should alarm everyone.
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Re: Disallowed
There are a growing number of people, both in the U.S. and the western world, who are increasingly intolerant of any speech with which they disagree.
You are confusing "more speech" with intolerance. Neil Young engaged in speech to protest decisions he disagreed with. Spotify engaged in its speech determining who it wished to align with.
It's the marketplace of ideas Koby.
They view themselves ever being exposed to an opposing viewpoint as an affront to their very existence.
I have seen no one doing this.
And they even view it as unconscionable that anyone else would be permitted to listen to these opposing viewpoints, even if those others actively sought out the material.
I see no one doing this.
These Individuals are facists.
Expressing their views makes them fascists? No. But people -- such as yourself -- who claim to have the right to force private companies to host speech they disagree with, sure seem to toe the line.
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Re: Disallowed
Consider the alternative. To have a civil open society with free speech, you need to paradoxically ban speech calling for the removal of rights.
Most things that get people called out are things around trying to make in groups and outgroups so that you can dehumanize the other side. Now we wont be changing the laws about this topic, but you can sure as heck assume we will call people out for pushing bad information that hurts people, and marginalizing people who put women, or Jewish, or other groups down.
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Re: Disallowed
"These Individuals are facists."
Let's add 'fascist' to the list of words you don't know the meaning of. Or spelling of.
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Re: Re: he did NAZI that one coming
"They are, however, making it impossible to have a conversation because you get your career ruined if you accidentally say the wrong thing."
Have you tried not being a fascist?
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To be fair on the spelling front, I can understand how someone would spell it that way based on its pronounciation. I still have a bit of trouble with that from time to time.
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Re: Re: Disallowed
Notice how nothing even remotely similar to TheComputerGuy's hallucinations resemble anything in the real world.
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Re: Re: Re:
What made you imagine your gaslighting about posts that are still completely visible in their entirety would be a winning tactic?
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Re: Re: Re:
Deliberate fraudulent claims are the furthest thing from "disagrees with opinion."
Though it's not like you've ever once been honest here.
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Would you look at the time, it's 'Koby runs-away-o-clock' again
There are a growing number of people, both in the U.S. and the western world, who are increasingly intolerant of any speech with which they disagree.
Which 'speech' would that be Koby, and as always be specific.
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Once more for empahsis I guess...
230 exists to protect the first amendment by allowed you to afford it.
If you can't afford to exercise a right then effectively you don't have it, that is all that 230 does by allowing platforms to make use of their first amendment rights to decide which speech and people they will and will not associate with without being sued into the ground for doing so, so as a past TD article so rightly noted if you think you've got a problem with 230 what you really have a problem with is the first amendment.
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Re: Re: Disallowed
Just for clarification which 'career ruining/ending' slips of the tongue would those be?
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Re: Disallowed
"These individuals" go by the username of "Koby"
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Re: Re: Re:
You said that you have a problem with people trying to get content removed, which is deplatforming.
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Re:
I think Mike confirmed this, but section 230 doesn't make the distinction between paid and hosted, it makes the distinction between first and third party. Unless it can be shown that Spotify have a direct editorial role in the content, I believe section 230 would still apply.
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Re:
With that particular word, I think that it would be pronounced "face-ists" the way Koby spelled it so the spelling would be more logical there than with some other easily confused words.
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Re: Another Angle to this Story
"Whatever you think about Rogan, its not a good thing that these musicians are using their large catalogs of copyrighted works (which, one might argue, should be in the public domain by now) to attempt to bully companies into de-platforming people."
Why not? It took a long time to convince some of these artists to offer digital versions of their music in the first place. Why do they have to continue a business relationship with someone they find it objectionable to do business with if they change their mind on the subject?
"What if some huge artist or label told Google that they had to de-list techdirt or get their music pulled form Google play"
Well, that would be completely stupid, but also within their right. I'm sure Mike would be happy with the Streisand Effect on the traffic here when that demand was publicised.
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Re:
I'm pretty sure Young didn't think there was really a chance in hell that Spottify would ditch their $100 million investment to keep him anyway. This was more about publicising the issue and hopefully inspiring customers to ditch them in support of the issue (which from what I can see has been happening, albeit not necessarily on a large scale):
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Re: Disallowed
"There are a growing number of people, both in the U.S. and the western world, who are increasingly intolerant of any speech with which they disagree"
Which is actually a very good thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
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Re: Re: Re:
"Not everyone who disagrees with (someone who does not want the world eaten) wants to eat the world."
FTFY.
What is being discussed isn't Rogan choosing to host people with merely differences of opinion. Flat Earthers, comparative religion, friedmanists contra keynesians, psychics, marxists, libertarians...those are all opinions.
Sure, so is "anti-vaxx" - with the key difference that;
A) Everything about anti-vaxx has proven a demonstrable lie.
B) It's a belief which is in large part to blame for 700000 americans dying which wouldn't be dead had the US pandemic response been merely lackadaisical and mediocre.
Rogan is certainly within his rights to host such people. But this case isn't the nazi party marching through public space on skokie. This is the bartender hosting nazis surprised that his regular patrons now abandon him because they don't want to stand with him on that choice.
When Rogan decided to platform and thereby abet and assist those malicious asshats that's a choice with consequences.
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Re: Disallowed
"There are a growing number of people, both in the U.S. and the western world, who are increasingly intolerant of any speech which advocates and assists massive loss of life."
FTFY.
This may come as news to you, Koby, but the world has never tolerated those inciting conditions of mortal danger for massive amounts of people.
I'd say no one with common sense should be surprised at that but given how broken your moral and ethical compass, not to mention your sense of basic logic, has proven to be on multiple occasions...
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
The main issue from what I understand isn't that he chooses to host these people. The problem is that he basically gives them a platform and nods along. There would be value if he challenged what they say, or set up a debate with an actual counter position, but his "interview" style is basically to give them access to a far wider platform than they have themselves and say what they want. This is especially problematic because some of the more clued-in guests will tone down the rhetoric they spew elsewhere in order to attract more followers.
I've never listened to Rogan directly, but I've heard dissections on a podcast that follows the antics of Alex Jones. On his own Infowars shows, Alex will often devolve into very strange theories, rants about religion and other such things. But, on Rogan's show he's way more subdued and might appear to the uninitiated to be quite reasonable at times. But, he's talking about the same disinformation.
For example, Alex is obsessed with the idea that because a training exercise hosted by (I think) NATO a few years back included among its many scenarios a global pandemic, that it's an admission that COVID is a bioweapon released to control populations. There's nothing behind that unless you indulge in a huge amount of cherry picking and misrepresentation, but that's what he claims. He brought this up while talking to Rogan, and the only challenge he got was a cursory check to prove that the document existed (not that it said what Alex said it did, only that it was there). So, while the host of the podcast I listen to could spend 30 minutes detailing why the claim is nonsense, how the document says nothing like what Alex said it did and even how the document diverges so far from reality even within the cherry picked paragraphs, the casual listener to Rogan would easily be fooled into thinking he was right. He was allowed to lie and spread disinformation to Rogan's audience in a way that might fool them and affect how they themselves deal with the pandemic, and thus harm others in a way that would not have happened if they weren't lied to about the pandemic.
This is why Rogan is so problematic. Not because he has "controversial" guests, but because he amplifies so many liars, grifters and lunatics by giving them a platform and air of respectability. This is a big problem in normal times, but in the middle of a global pandemic it goes from irresponsible to outright dangerous - and I don't see why people should not complain about danger to themselves.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
I think I'm one of those uninitiated. I haven't listened to his show, but I sort of got the idea that he had a some what reasonable style of encouraging discussion. That he didn't push back too much, for the sake of hearing the guests point of view, and because he wasn't necessarily knowledgeable enough. But I didn't realize he invited Nazis on his show, I think we all know what they think.
I had thought that his response to all this was pretty decent, with some exception. He said that he was going to work harder on getting more informed, especially regarding pandemic stuff, before he has guests on that subject. And that he didn't want to chase away musicians like Neil Young, he was actually a fan. So I'm not sure what to think, but not interested enough to tune in. Then he defended some of the things said on the show that were not true 6+ months ago, that have changed with the mutation of the virus, and are actually accurate now, complaining that people were being banned left and right for saying it. Trevor Noah called it broken clock thinking, which is spot on. Plus, I get a little sick of the whining when people get multiple warnings about spreading disinformation and they keep doing it anyway and have a tantrum when they get the boot.
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Re: Re: Disallowed
He was not afraid to be wrong in every single way
Brave, brave, brave, brave Sir Koby
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
"But I didn't realize he invited Nazis on his show, I think we all know what they think."
A short list of some of the "fine" people he's had as guests.
Alex Jones
Gavin McInnes
Milo Yiannopoulos
Charles C. Johnson
Carl Benjamin (aka Sargon of Akkad)
Stefan Molyneaux
Steven Crowder
Now, look into who these people are if you're not already aware. Then, imagine that they're aware enough not to voice their more extremist, obviously objectionable views on such a wide platform that they're not allowed anywhere else (with most of them having been banned from social media for doing so), and even come across as somewhat reasonable. Then imagine the average Rogan listener being taken in by these more reasonable representations of bad ideas and being guided down the rabbit hole to what their real purpose is.
That's the problem.
"Trevor Noah called it broken clock thinking, which is spot on"
I doubt it. The broken clock analogy means that you can be right even if you're wrong almost all the time, without having to change or put in any effort. Rogan is in the middle of a $100 million contract, and presumably that contract has clauses in it that allow Spotify to ditch him if they start losing them money. So, he puts on a reasonable face while there's headlines about how toxic his show is and how he really wishes that everyone could get along until the danger to his income is passed.
This is basic ass-covering and the mask will drop the moment the spotlight is no longer on him.
"Plus, I get a little sick of the whining when people get multiple warnings about spreading disinformation and they keep doing it anyway and have a tantrum when they get the boot"
...then go on all the right-wing grifter platforms to whine about how they've been "silenced", even though more people know about what they're saying because of that than ever saw the original content.
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Re: Another Angle to this Story
What do you think should happen in that case? Should the musician not be allowed to tell Google that? Should Google not be allowed to de-list Techdirt? Or should everyone be permitted to do business, or stop doing business, with whomever they choose?
(ignoring that copyright is too long, which isn't really germane)
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Re: Re: Another Angle to this Story
I'm assuming he's trying to say something about an imbalance of power, or monopoly, which is fine.
But, Rogan and Spotify are the ones with the power here (so far), delisting TD from Google would achieve less than nothing (since the publicity from that happening would outweigh the effect of doing so), and I suspect that Google Play is far from the main place Android owners get their music from to begin with.
I wouldn't agree with the idea that a supplier cannot remove their content from a provider if they wish to end a business (or personal) relationship for whatever reason even if it's clearly bullying (since the implications of forcing them to say are way more problematic). But, it's unlikely such a demand would go their way in the case presented.
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Re: Disallowed
Ah yes, you and the NeoNazis you represent.
Have you ever considered admitting to be a NeoNazi? Would save us all time.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Americans used to be less...dumb...about free speech. Consequences have always existed over choices made. It's just that in modern times "Free speech" became a meaningless talking point and at some point liberals forgot that not everything can be debated from a neutral point of view. It's the literal reason why both MLK and Malcolm X were so disillusioned in the "moderate" fence-sitters who made all the right noises and then stabbed them in the back.
Klansman: "They Will Not Replace Us! Toss out the Mexican Rapist! String up the <N-word>!"
Civil Rights Activist: "Hell no, Get Lost!"
Moderate: "Guys, surely we can talk about this? Lynching is a no-go but there must be some compromise we can agree on? Redlining? Separate But Equal?"
Some issues just don't have medium ground. You can't, in real life or in theory, be just a little racist, just a little pregnant, or just a little anti-science. And americans need to re-learn that.
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Re: Re: Disallowed
"Which is actually a very good thing."
It's ironic that the lessons europe had to learn, much of it due to US influence, americans have forgotten completely.
The nazis and alt-right know damn well there is no middle ground to be had. They cleave to an opinion which is utterly incompatible with democracy, civil rights, or any of the principles written off in the US constitution and the UN declaration of human rights.
And they also know that if they can just finagle the bleeding-heart gullible morons who believe in humanitarian principles to invite them to the table to discuss things, they win.
Because just as you can't be just a little bit pregnant you also can't be on the fence about racism. The position between the nazi and the humanitarian is the guy who agrees to kill only a few jews or perhaps agree to force them to wear a star of david and accept second-class citizenship. Still an anti-semite nazi, just one who isn't a frothing lunatic about it.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
"Some issues just don't have medium ground."
To paraphrase something I've seen a lot recently - if one person tells you it's clear skies and the other tells you it's raining, your job as a journalist is not to report on "both sides" of the issue. Your job is to open the damn window and find out which is true, because it's not possible for both to be true. There might be an edge case where neither person is actually lying (for example, it's clear but there's a burst pipe outside the window of the person who thinks it's raining), but you won't find out without some actual investigation, and the most likely outcome is that one position is indeed completely wrong without supporting evidence and can therefore be ignored.
With things like basic medical advice during a pandemic and human rights, it becomes even more important to do the investigations because the consequences of compromise is that people literally die. If your "moderate" compromise position is "some people will needlessly suffer and die", it's still wrong, matter how carefully you're treading to avoid offending the Nazi snowflakes.
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Re: You Made A Mistake
You seem to be new here, and perhaps can be forgiven for assuming the Masnick and his sycophants in the comments section despise free speech.
They are all, especially the commenters, virulent advocates of censorship and Thought Policing.
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Re: Re: Disallowed
"I have seen no one doing this."
Masnick, your entire post was this very thing. You are a mid-wit.
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Re: Re: Re: Disallowed
Masnick, your entire post was this very thing.
This post claims that being exposed to an opposing viewpoint is an affront to my very existence? That's a weird thing to say, since nothing in this post takes any view one way or the other on being exposed to viewpoints. It's literally just about the question of whether or not Section 230 matters here.
I honestly don't mind that people listen to Rogan. I think everyone here has free speech rights, but I think the people making a big deal out of Rogan aren't doing themselves any favors either, and playing into a silly martyrdom.
Honestly, my only complaint with Spotify is their nonsense desire to lock up open podcasts into their proprietary audio format. If Rogan had stayed as a regular podcast none of this would matter.
You are a mid-wit.
I mean, fuck, you're the guy who can't read the fucking post. So if I'm a mid-wit, what the fuck does that make you?
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Re: Re: You Made A Mistake
I know the fictional version of people you fight so valiantly against are evil, but did you ever consider that your life would be easier by dealing with the real ones?
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